THE 



, ik 



PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 



IN THE PAST AND IN THE FUTURE. 



By SAMUEL TYLER, 



OF THE MARYLAND BAR. 



" "Whatever I write, as soon as I shall discover it not to be truth, my hand 
shall be forwardest to throw it into the fire." — Locke. 




PHILADELPHIA: 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT &C0. 

LONDON: TRUBNER & CO. 

1858. 



^l"" 

1^°\ 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by 

SAMUEL TYLER, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Maryland. 



/ 

-7 



TO 



SECRETARY OF THE SMTHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 

Who, while he has devoted his life with eminent success to 
the investigation and advancement of physical science, has 
always recognized the usefulness as well as the intellectual 
dignity of rational philosophy, this tract is appropriately in- 
scribed by his friend the author. 

Frederick City, Md., July, 1858. 



PKEFACE. 



In August 1857, an eminent philosopher* of Europe 
in a letter to me said: ''The position of America in 
many respects qualifies it admirably for the task of sift- 
ing the wheat from the chaf in the various conflicting 
philosophies of Europe, and producing from the mate- 
rials of the older literature, aided by the independent 
spirit of her own thinkers, a system adapted to the cha- 
racter and wants of the age." It is to do something 
•towards the development of such a system that I have 
prepared this tract. I have endeavoured to show that 
the true philosophy is founded upon an analysis of con- 
sdousness within the bounds of common sense. I have 
pursued this course of speculation from the beginning 
of the Greek epoch down to the present time, and have 
pointed out, both by positive and negative criticism, the 
one perennial doctrine advancing from age to age by 
new contributions, until it seems manifest, that its con- 
flicts with other systems have only served to develop it 
into that complete doctrine which will be evolved by the 

■ * Mr. H. L. Mansel, of Oxford. 



b PREFACE. 

discussions of the future directed in the same course, and 
reposing on the same foundation in the data of con- 
sciousness. I have, too, at appropriate points indicated 
what seem to me initials of new revelations in the one 
perennial evolution of philosophical truth. 

This tract has been composed from two articles con- 
tributed by me to Reviews. The one, constituting the 
first part, was published in the Southern Quarterly Re- 
view for November, 1856. The other, constituting the 
second part, was published in the Princeton Review for 
October, 1855. The articles met with so much favour 
in Europe and America, that I am induced to publish 
them in this form. The article in the Princeton Review 
was read by Sir William Hamilton before his death, and 
he intended* to honour me with an answer to my dissent- 
ing criticisms, but death deprived us of the light which 
he doubtless would have shed upon the points in dispute. 
His forthcoming lectures will, perhaps, give us more 
light. 

* Letter to me from Lady Hamilton. 



CONTENTS. 



PART FIRST, 



AXCIENT PEEIOD. 



Three Epochs: 1. From Thales to Socrates; 2. From 
Socrates to Christianity; 3. From Christianity to the 
Sixth Century 11 



MEDT^YAL PERIOD. 



From Charlemagne, to the Capture of Constantinople 
by the Turks 43 



MODEEX PERIOD. 



From the Discovery of America to the Second Quarter 
of the Nineteenth Century 48 



PART SECOND. 



REACTIOXARY EPOCH. 



From the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century, 
and still in progress 125 



PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY, 



I art gmt 



THREE GREAT PERIODS. 

The relation of philosophy to its history is 
such, that the best mode of teaching it, even 
in system, if regard be had to its future as 
well as its past, is to exhibit it in its progress 
through its various aspects in the changing 
conditions of thought in the successive gene- 
rations of men. By such a review, under 
the illumination of a criticism which throws 
over the doctrines of the earlier ages, the 
light of the more mature doctrines of the 
later times, and brings forward to the later 
times, the various aspects which the prob- 
lems presented to the struggling reason of 
the earlier ages, a fuller understanding of the 

1 



k 



10 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

doctrines of philosophy and of the problems 
both solved and unsolved may be attained. 
And the method of philosophising, which 
science may have constructed, will receive 
confirmation and correction and expansion 
from the one perennial method which the 
endeavours both positive and negative of all 
sects of philosophers to explain, or to deny 
all explanation of, the phenomena of exist- 
ence, will disclose as the rational tentative of 
universal reason striving for mastery over the 
unknown. By such a comprehensive survey, 
the narrowness of schools with their special 
points of view and their technicalities will 
be stepped over, and the basis of the one 
catholic philosophy will be discerned in those 
assumptions implicitly made, even in para- 
doxes, from the necessities of intelligence by 
all sects of philosophers; and on which as 
explicitly enounced doctrine, the bewildered 
reason has, at last, been content to seek its 
rest. And upon this one catholic doctrine, 
can be grafted whatever of original thought 
we may have to contribute to the great tree 
of philosophy, at the parts of its growth 
where it most fitly pertains. 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 11 

Such is the plan of this tract, as, in our 
judgment, especially suited to America where 
there are no schools of philosophy, but where 
a superstructure of our own is to be reared 
upon the foundations of European thought. 

The progress of philosophy (overlooking 
the Eastern period anterior to that of Greece,) 
presents three great periods: 1. Antiquity; 
2. The Middle Ages; 3. Modern Times. 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 

Ancient philosophy comprehends three 
epochs. The first, from Thales to Socrates, 
about one hundred and thirty years, gave 
rise to four principal sects — the Ionic, founded 
by Thales; the Italic, founded by Pythago- 
ras; the Eleatic, founded by Xenophanes; 
and the Atomic, founded by Leucippus and 
Democritus. The second epoch was from 
Socrates to the promulgation of Christianity, 
about ^ye centuries. The third epoch ex- 
tends from the preaching of Christianity to 
the age of Charlemagne, or rather into the 



12 PEOaRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

sixth century; for philosophy, like all other 
cultivation, was extinguished in the barbar- 
ism which immediately preceded the reign of 
that great monarch. 

From Thales to Socrates, but one problem 
was discussed — the origin of existence; the 
essence of things; the formation of the uni- 
verse. Each of the four sects of philoso- 
phers, during this epoch, was distinguished 
for the boldness of its hypothesis in attempt- 
ing to account for the origin of the universe. 
The different sects varied from each other 
only in the principles of their solution of the 
one problem. The magnificence of the world 
without withdrew philosophers from contem- 
plating the world within. Philosophy was, 
therefore, physical, not psychological — of 
nature, not of the mind. The contemplation 
of nature had filled the poets Hesiod and 
Homer with mythical dreams. Every part 
of the physical world had been personified by 
them. In their age, the Greek mind had no 
other notion of causation than the agency 
of actual personages. All the operations of 
nature were supposed to be carried on by the 
immediate agency of actual persons. The 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 13 

four sects of philosophers which we have 
mentioned, dispelled the myths of the poets 
from the contemplation of nature, and substi- 
tuted for persons, powers or forces inherent 
in matter, as the causes or formative princi- 
ples of nature. And Anaxagoras even sug- 
gested one Mind as the framer of all things. 
These four sects of philosophers made the 
first step in philosophy beyond the mytho- 
poeic conceptions of the poets. In the poets, 
the emotional element of the mind was para- 
mount, expending itself in a personifying 
sympathy, peopling the earth with all those 
personages which figure in Greek mythology. 
In the philosophers, the intellectual element 
was paramount, looking at the operations of 
nature as mechanical and dynamic. Still, 
the thoughts of the highest minds were di- 
rected to the contemplation of the panorama 
of the external world. 

To the sects of philosophers which we have 
considered, succeeded the Sophists. This class 
of thinkers belongs to a peculiar stage in 
human progress — to a period of criticism or 
transition. The previous sects of philoso- 
phers had failed to find any platform of truth 
1* 



14 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

on which the reason of man could rest satis- 
fied. Their labours had ended, and no fruits 
had been garnered into the treasury of know- 
ledge. They, too, had no successors in their 
labour to solve the problem of the universe. 
The different views of nature, taken by the 
several sects, had all proved unsatisfactory, 
and yet seemed to have left no other possible 
view. This, the Sophists saw. The Sophists 
were, in truth, the offspring of the thinking 
of these sects of naturalists. Their parentage 
is shown in the fact, that, in general, they 
were materialists. The common doctrine of 
the Sophists was, that doubt attaches to every 
opinion, and that it is impossible to find cer- 
tainty in anything. They were thorough 
skeptics. However much these actors in the 
great drama of thought may differ in special 
doctrines, on the one thing of skepticism they 
were agreed; and in their skepticism, we find 
the place on which they stand in tlie great 
order in which the leaders of thought, at dif- 
ferent epochs, are marshaled in the sequences 
of history. We must not, as has been so 
often done, regard this era as one only of de- 
cadence; for, while we repudiate the opinion 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 15 

of Mr. Grote, that the Sophists were as honest 
teachers as Socrates, and their doctrines only 
a little less enlightened, we readily admit that 
they planted in the field of thought many 
fruitful germs. They called out investiga- 
tions in the theory of knowledge, in logic, 
and in language. The methodical treatment 
of many branches of knowledge was begun 
by them. They were the first to make style 
a special object of study amongst the Greeks. 
Greek rhetoric sprung out of their teachings. 
They, in a word, prepared instruments, and 
also cleared the way, to some extent, for the 
new progress which was to succeed. 

Now begins the second epoch of ancient 
philosophy. Socrates is the leader in this 
period of the struggles of the mind of man 
with the difficulties of knowing theoretically 
— of construing to one's consciousness what 
he feels and sees within and without himself. 
The Sophists had withdrawn attention from 
nature, and the solutions of those problems 
which had engaged the first four sects of 
Greek philosophors, and had fixed attention 
on language in itself, and in its contents. 
They, in fact, began a revolution in the think- 



16 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ing of the nation. Socrates was trained in 
their discipline. He profited especially by 
the lectures of Prodicus and Anaxagoras. In 
fact, his method was that of the Sophists; 
and when he turned his assaults upon them, 
his victories were not due more to the greater 
truth which armed his doctrines, than to his 
greater skill in their own art of dialectics ; but 
yet, we must carefully distinguish the Socratic 
from the Sophistical spirit of philosophising. 
That of the Sophists was proud and boastful, 
as their very name, aotpcgtot, loisemen, indicates: 
that of Socrates was humble, as the name he 
adopted, ^iXoao^og, lover of wisdom, to distin- 
guish himself and school from the Sophists, 
shows. And while the spirit of the Sophists 
was boastful, it was skeptical; but while that 
of Socrates was diffident, it was hopeful of 
certainty and truth. The fruitful germ which 
Socrates introduced into philosophy, was the 
problem of human consciousness. The mind 
was, in his philosophy, its own point of de- 
parture, and its principal object. With him 
began the new era in philosophy, where the 
inscription on the Delphic temple, "Know 
Thyself," became the watchword of philoso- 



ANCIENT PEEIOD. 17 

phy. In consciousness Socrates found that 
basis of truth which the Sophists had failed 
to discover. They dwelt upon language and 
its contents, and as these contents were 
merely the factitious unities of popular and 
uncritical observations, much contradiction, 
as well as vagueness, would be found in the 
doctrines of all prevailing thought. Socrates, 
therefore, based his method upon conscious- 
ness^ and, by what he called intellectual mid- 
wifery^ unfolded truth from the minds of those 
with whom he conversed. This was the posi- 
tive application of his method; and so far it 
was his own. But then, it must be borne in 
mind that Socrates merely taught men how to 
^Tiiloso^pJiise, and did not teach them philoso- 
phy, for he declared that he had none to 
teach. Through the negative application of 
his method he refuted the Sophists, by show- 
ing contradiction between their doctrines. 
This, however, was but the common dialecti- 
cal method of the Sophists themselves, of 
asking questions adroitly chosen for their 
logical relations to the doctrines in dispute, 
and making the answers obtained, the premi- 
ses from which conclusions are deduced at 



18 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

variance with the doctrines of your antago- 
nist, and yet consonant with his admissions 
in the answers to your questions. Socrates 
achieved his triumphs in the thinking of his 
age, by adding a new force to the method of 
the Sophists, which made it positive as well 
as negative, and that in the profoundest ap- 
plications as well as in ordinary problems 
which lie more on the surface of knowledge. 

Socrates had many followers, who, though 
they diverged much from each other in doc- 
trines, all gave much attention to human 
consciousness, and continued the Socratic 
movement. Amongst these were the two 
greatest thinkers of antiquity, Plato and 
Aristotle. 

Plato, like every other philosopher, saw 
that the great end of philosophy is to explain 
the phenomenal world, and especially the 
sensible universe. For it is this universe 
that, from his earliest infancy, presses with- 
out ceasing upon the attention of man. 
Nowhere else is this object of philosophy 
more distinctly displayed than in the writ- 
ings of Plato. He wrote no systematic trea- 
tise of philosophy; but his philosophical doc- 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 19 

trines are woven through his various dia- 
logues, not so much for themselves as for a 
basis to his moral, political, and physical 
theories; in the Phaedo, to prove the immor- 
tality of the soul ; in the Republic, to sustain 
his ethical and political principles; in the 
Timseus, to explain and verify his physical 
theories. Plato's philosophy is but the life, 
the central principle, of his practical doc- 
trines. Man, hving and acting amidst mys- 
teries, and himself the greatest mystery of 
all, was the great object of the philosophy 
of Plato. To explain man, and all that con- 
cerns him, either in the past, the present, 
and the future, was what Plato strove to do 
by his philosophy. He did not turn away 
from the realities of nature, and spend his 
life in unreal dreams, as those who talk so 
much about his mysticism, opine. It was 
the actual, passing before our senses and ex- 
perienced in our consciousness, that he at- 
tempted to explain, and to found upon a basis 
of verity. 

With this view of the scope and purpose 
of Plato's philosophy, let us inquire into the 



20 PKOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

method by which he endeavoured to accom- 
plish his ends. 

Socrates, the master of Plato, was duly 
impressed with the weakness of the human 
mind, and felt how narrow are the limits of 
human knowledge. In fact, he circumscribed 
human knowledge within much narrower 
bounds than most of the great teachers of 
our race. Physical inquiries he entirely re- 
pudiated as beyond the comprehension of 
man. He was, in truth, rather a moralist 
and dialectician, than a philosopher in the 
sense of one addicted to the higher walks of 
speculation. And the vice of his method 
was the one, common to the Greek philoso- 
phers, of taking for granted that the notions 
contained in common language are sufficiently 
accurate and expressive of realities for a basis 
of philosophy. This is sufficiently exempli- 
fied in the discussion reproduced by Plato in 
the Phsedo. It is taken for granted, that the 
doctrine of the immortality of the soul is de- 
ducible from the common notions then enter- 
tained upon the topics out of which the argu- 
ment is constructed. There is no attempt to 
evolve new principles out of the facts of con- 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 21 

sciousness; no effort to trace lines of original 
speculation through secrets of psychological 
manifestations ; but all the proofs are deduced 
from the inaccurate notions embodied in the 
language of the times. The doctrine, that 
all acquired knowledge is but a reminiscence 
of what was learned in a prior state of exist- 
ence/ approaches nearer to an attempt at the 
evolution of a new principle by reflective 
analysis from psychological phenomena, than 
anything else in the dialogue ; but this was 
doubtless a sophism of Plato's own, put into 
the mouth of Socrates, and is^ after all, a 
shallow pretence resting upon mere assump- 
tion. The whole inquiry consists of assump- 
tions and ratiocinations. There is no sifting 
of premises, no searching for principles amidst 
psychological facts manifested in self-con- 
sciousness; but the whole fabric rests upon 
the notions embodied in the language of the 
people. There is no designed attempt at any 
more accurate basis for the deduction of con- 
clusions. Though he saw, as we have said, 
that consciousness is the criterion of truth. 

The doctrine of Plato, as to the circle of 
human knowledge and the powers of the 

2 



22 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mind, differed widely from that of Socrates. 
Plato thought that no speculation is beyond 
the reach of the human mind. His was an 
ambitious philosophy. But we will show, 
that, like the speculations of the other Greek 
philosophers, his philosophy was founded 
upon popular notions and remnants of doc- 
trine handed down, in loose traditions, from 
older speculators, who built upon the same 
superficial basis. 

The fundamental doctrine of Plato's philoso- 
phy is, that there are real entities subsisting 
in the universe, corresponding to the general 
terms used in language; and that these gene- 
ral entities, called ideas, are the only proper 
objects of science: and that the method of 
philosophising is to close the senses, and 
dwell in intellectual contemplation on these 
ideas^ and to note their relations and combine 
them into propositions, and deduce conclu- 
sions from these propositions: and that the 
conclusions will correspond with the empiri- 
cal truths of physics and the practical truths 
of morals, because the logical relations of 
these ideas correspond with the physical and 
moral relations of their images or represen- 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 23 

tations — the phenomena of the physical and 
moral worlds. Such is the method of Plato 
when explicitly unfolded. 

It results from such a method, that Plato's 
physics and Plato's logic, or, more strictly, 
Plato's metaphysics and Plato's dialectics, are 
the same. His physics is a logico-physics. 
The words of popular language embodied his 
whole field of observation. And the logical 
relations of the words, therefore, constituted, 
or were commuted with, the physical rela- 
tions of the things signified by them; because 
these things were nothing else than the popu- 
lar meaning of these words. This is suffi- 
ciently exemplified in the Platonic doctrine 
of contraries. This doctrine is, that the ulti- 
mate powers of nature are contraries, and 
that everything is generated by its contrary. 
"There is (says Plato) a certain medium 
between the two contraries. There are two 
births, or processions — one of this from that, 
and of that from this. The medium between 
a greater and a less thing is increase and 
diminution. The same is the case of what 
we call mixing, separating, heating, evolv- 
ing, and all other things without end. For, 



24 PKOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

though it sometimes falls out, that we have 
not terms to express those changes and 
mediums, yet experience shows, that hj an 
absolute necessity, things take rise from one 
another, and pass reciprocally from one to 
another through a medium." It is manifest, 
that the two hirths^ or processions^ spoken of 
as subsisting in nature between contraries, 
are nothing but the logical relations of the 
meaning of the words greater and less. There 
are no births, or processions, in nature, corre- 
sponding with these relations, constituting 
a generative medium between the entities 
greater and less. The whole doctrine is an 
affair of words. The reasoning is logico- 
physical. There is nothing real beyond the 
meaning of the words. The whole of philoso- 
phy and science is made nothing more than 
the development of the meaning of the terms 
of common language. Plato's philoso|)hy, 
therefore, like all ancient philosophy, reposes 
upon mere popular notions. He finds the 
words, equality, hig, little, and other like 
words, in popular language, and, instead of 
looking into nature for the real things in- 
tended to be signified by these terms, he con- 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 25 

ceives that there are realities independent of 
nature corresponding with them. 

That Plato's supposed higher objects of 
knowledge, called ideas, are but the popular 
signification of general terms, is sufficiently 
manifest from Plato's own theory of the origin 
of this sort of knowledge. His theory is, 
that though the knowledge of ideas is ac- 
quired in a prior state of existence, yet it is 
recovered in this world by the ministry of 
the senses exercised upon individual objects, 
which recall the idea^ by reminiscence. This 
theory shows, that these ideas are but the 
general notions formed by every one in the 
exercise of his faculties upon the objects of 
nature. In other words, ideas are only the 
meaning of general terms, which express only 
relations, and afford no irrespective objects. 

So, then, the Idealism of Plato, when sifted 
to the bottom, is found to be the mere Phe- 
nomenalism of the common mind — a lame 
empiricism. There is no deeper principle 
underlying it, as is pretended — no knowledge 
of higher essences remembered from a prior 
state of existence. A severe logic takes off 
the veil, and Plato is seen to stand on the 



26 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

common ground of the meagre empiricism of 
the ancient philosophy. All philosophers ne- 
cessarily take their departure from the same 
general experiences, whatever may be pre- 
tended to the contrary; and the different re- 
sults of their speculations will depend upon 
the difference in the accuracy, the extent, 
and the completeness of their observations, 
and legitimate inferences or deductions. 

Aristotle appears next in Greek philoso- 
phy; he was the very genius of subtlety and 
of system; and no greater thinker has yet 
appeared in the family of man. He saw 
that the basis of science and philosophy must, 
from the very structure of the human mind, 
be phenomenal. Therefore, he strove to fix 
logic on a psychological basis. With this 
view, he proceeded to analyze the senses, and 
account for the origin of knowledge through 
sensation. He repudiated the Platonic doc- 
trine of ideaSy and contended that the only 
real existences are individuals, and that gene- 
rals may be nothing more, so far as the pur- 
pose of demonstration is concerned, than 
terms denoting a property common to an in- 
definite number of individuals. " The steady 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 27 

contemplation (says Aristotle, in his Meta- 
physics), of any individual object under that 
aspect in which it agrees with other indi- 
viduals, will recall many similar objects to 
the mind; the stability of the one will com- 
municate stability to the others, and thus 
give birth to what are called universals, that 
is, to general terms, equally applicable to an 
indefinite number of individuals." Laying 
down this doctrine as the basis of his theory 
of knowing, he at once constructed his logic 
in accordance with it. Therefore, in his Pos- 
terior Analytics, he thus lays down the psy- 
chological basis of demonstration: "For the 
purpose of demonstration, it is not necessary 
to suppose the existence of general ideas, but 
only that one general term can be applied 
with truth, and in the same sense, to many 
individuals. It is not necessary to suppose 
that general terms, denoting any class of sub- 
stances, express anything besides the different 
particulars to which they apply, any more 
than the general terms denoting qualities, 
relations, or actions. One general term stands 
for a variety of particulars, considered under 
one and the same aspect; but to suppose that 



28 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

this term requires one substantial archetype 
or idea, as general as itself, is the hearer's 
fault; such a supposition not being necessary 
for the purpose of demonstration." 

If we should stop our inquiry here, Aris- 
totle would appear to be a mere Sensation- 
alist; and such is, sometimes, the account of 
him in history. Plato is represented as a 
pure Idealist, while Aristotle is represented 
as a pure Sensationalist. This is a great mis- 
take; each is both an Idealist and a Sensa- 
tionalist — maintaining that human know- 
ledge is derived from both the intellect and 
the senses. Plato, it is true, considers intel- 
lect exercised upon ideas, the sole source of 
science; yet he ascribed some degree of know- 
ing to the senses. Aristotle ascribed much 
more importance to sense, but yet made both 
intellect and sense the conjunct principle of 
science. He rejected the Platonic doctrine 
of ideas, but, as we shall see, did not advance 
as far beyond it as the quotations from his 
writings which we have given above seem at 
first to indicate. 

It behooves us here to inquire, what is the 
Platonic doctrine of ideas? The word idea. 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 29 

since the time of Des Cartes, has been em- 
ployed to denote the objects of our conscious- 
ness in general; and, since the time of Gas- 
sendi and Condillac, whose school analyzed 
our highest faculties into our lowest, the word 
has been used to denote the objects of our 
senses in^ general. We have already seen 
that Plato used the word in a far different 
sense from either of these. He employed it 
to express the real forms of the intelligible 
world in lofty contrast with the images of the 
sensible. It was in this Platonic sense that 
Aristotle rejected the doctrine of ideas. 
"Plato (says Aristotle,) came to the doctrine 
of ideas, because he was convinced of the 
truth of the Heraclitic view, which regards 
the sensible world as a ceaseless flowing and 
changing. His conclusion from this was, that 
if there be a science of anything, there must 
be, besides the sensible, other substances 
w^hich have permanence; for there can be 
no science of the fleeting." In Plato's view, 
science demanded the reality of ideas as per- 
manent existences, independent of sensible 
phenomena. Aristotle maintained that there 
is no proof of the independent reality of 



k 



30 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ideas ; and that, at any rate, the doctrine fur- 
nishes no ground for the explanation of being. 
That Plato, in order to make science possible, 
had arbitrarily posited certain substances in- 
dependent of the sensible and uninfluenced 
by changes — but that only individual things 
are offered to us objectively. Therefore, that 
it is the individual which is conceived as uni- 
versal, or perhaps, that the universal is per- 
ceived in the individual; and that this con- 
ception or perception is the objectified idea 
of Plato. 

The doctrine, that the universal can be 
perceived in the individual, which was, per- 
haps, the opinion of Aristotle, when sifted to 
the bottom, is simply this. The products of 
the understanding or generalising faculty have 
both a general and an individual element, con- 
stituting two opposite logical poles. The sim- 
plest operation of this faculty is to compare 
together the points of resemblance between 
objects, and reduce them to one in the syn- 
thesis of thought. The product of this pro- 
cess is a concept. A concept being the result 
of a comparison, necessarily expresses a rela- 
tion; it therefore affords no absolute or irre- 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 31 

spective object of knowledge. In this aspect, 
it is general; but it can be realized in con- 
sciousness, by applying it, as the term of re- 
lation, to one or more of the objects which 
agree in the point or points of resemblance 
which it expresses. Jn this aspect, it is indi- 
vidual. A concept, therefore, is a synthesis 
of the universal and the individual expressed 
in a term of relation. And it is the obscure 
consciousness of this conjunction of the uni- 
versal and the individual in the products of 
the understanding, which has led men to 
assert the existence of universals in nature. 
It is but the common error in philosophy of 
commuting the subjective for the objective. 
This criticism, we believe, has never been 
made before. It seems to us to furnish a clue 
to the fundamental errors in philosophy.* 

* It is the clue to the error that all knowledge must 
be through previous knowledge — ^that our cognition of 
a class or universal is prior to that of the individual. 
Though intuition must precede conception, yet the in- 
dividual as .such and the universal are discerned simul- 
taneously. We cannot distinguish one individual from 
another without being conscious of the notion which that 
individual exemplifies The general notion is necessarily 



32 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

From the criticism of Plato's doctrine of 
ideas, arose Aristotle's doctrine of matter and 
form. Aristotle enumerates four metaphysi- 
cal causes or principles; matter, form, moving 
cause, and end. But these four can be re- 
solved into the fundamental antithesis of 
matter and form. Matter and form, there- 
fore, are, according to the Aristotelic doctrine, 
the only things which cannot be resolved into 
each other. Matter, according to Aristotle, 
is capable of the widest diversity of forms, 
but is itself without determinate form: it 
Is everything in possibility, but nothing in 
actuality. Matter is thus a far more positive 
thing with Aristotle than with Plato, who 
treated it as a shadow. We must guard 
against the supposition, that Aristotle means 
by form what we mean by shape. The Aris- 
totelic form is an activity which becomes ac- 
tualized, through matter, in individual objects. 

Aristotle's theory of knowledge corresponds 
with his theory of forms. As, according to 

conceived along with the individual which is discerned 
under it. This is possible, because things are presented 
in plurality, and conception must begin at once in aid of 
intuition to complete the apprehension of the individual. 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 33 

his metaphysical doctrine^ jprms or universals 
exist not apart from, but in individual objects, 
he made, as we have said before, both intellect 
and sense important faculties in science. He 
held that there is an a priori knowledge para- 
mount to, but not exclusive of, the a jposteriori. 
That, though universals are kno^vn through 
the intellect and im]3licitly contain particu- 
lars, yet we may remain ignorant of particu- 
lars untirthey are realized through the senses. 
Therefore, that intellect and sense combine in 
framing the fabric of science. Accordingly 
Aristotle's method is two-fold, deductive and 
inductive; the first allied with intellect and 
forms or universals; the second, with sense 
and individuals. In conformity with this 
doctrine, Aristotle seems to have considered 
syllogism proper, or deduction, no less amplia- 
tive than induction; that deduction did, in 
some way, assure us, or fortify our assurance, 
of real truth. 

Though Aristotle turned the mind to out- 
ward contemplation, he did not perceive the 
full import of observation, nor the full scope 
of induction. He still, in conformity with 
ancient thinking, made universals the para- 

3 



34 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mount element of science, and intellect the 
paramount principle. It is true, that his 
doctrine of universals differed metaphysi- 
cally from that of Plato; but logically it 
came to very much the same result in its in- 
fluence upon method. There are, according 
to Aristotle's theory of knowledge, certain 
universal principles existing in the mind, 
rather as native generalities than as mere 
necessities of so thinking, which furnish the 
propositions for syllogism ; therefore syllogism 
or deduction is not dependent for these on in- 
duction. Syllogism is thus the paramount 
process, and induction an inferior process, 
which may be used as corroborative of deduc- 
tion; and may be especially used by such 
minds as cannot a j^riori realize universals, 
but may perceive them in individuals. Aris- 
totle directed all his energies towards con- 
structing a system of deductive logic. And 
he assumed that the notions contained in the 
language of his day were sufficiently accurate 
for philosophy and science. Some of the pro- 
foundest distinctions of his philosophy are to 
be found in the very structure of the Greek 
language. The distinction, for instance, of 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 35 

power into active and passive which is said to 
have been established by Aristotle, and was 
adopted by Locke and by Leibnitz, is found 
in the very fabric of the Greek language, 
which possesses two sets of potential adjec- 
tives, the one for active and the other for 
passive power. Those significant of active 
power are, denoted by the termination ixog, 
and those of passive, by that of rog.* Though, 
therefore, Aristotle extricated logic from the 
metaphysical errors of Plato, he fell into a 
like error, but not so gross, under a different 
name; for Plato's ideas and Aristotle's forms 
are, at bottom, but the common notions ex- 
pressed by general terms. In his investiga- 
tions, Aristotle generally starts out by say- 
ing : " It is said so and so ;" and his procedure 
is ratiocination founded upon common no- 
tions. The doctrine of contraries, too, as 
was the case with Plato, is a sophistry by 
which he deceived himself. And in his rea- 
sonings, his doctrine of forms^ sometimes, un- 



* IloLrjTcxo'^ signifies that which can make, and Trotrjzov, 
that which can be made ; ■/.tvrjTf/.ov, that which can moTe, 
and xi)^7)Tov, that which can be moved. 



36 PEOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

consciously to himself, slips into Plato's doc- 
trine of ideas. And we doubt whether Aris- 
totle's estimate of induction, as a method of 
material inquiry, was higher than that of the 
ancient Greek skeptics as recorded by Sextus 
Empiricus in these words : " Induction is the 
conclusion of the universal from individual 
things. But this induction can only be cor- 
rect in as far as all the individual things 
agree with the universal. This universality 
must, therefore, be verified before its induc- 
tion can be made : a single case to the con- 
trary would destroy the truth of the induc- 
tion." The weakness of induction, as indi- 
cated by this criticism of the skeptics, was 
overrated by Aristotle; as his whole logic 
seems to assume, in the very subordinate 
place given to induction. But yet Aristotle 
was so superior to all other Greek philoso- 
phers as an observer of nature, that we find 
in Suidas, he is called the interpreter of nature 
— 'Aptcnro'TgX^yg trie, ^voecdc, ypafi^iarsvg nv. 

Let it not be supposed, from what we have 
said of the deficiencies of the Aristotelic logic, 
that we value it at a low estimate; it is far 
otherwise. We put the highest estimate, 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 37 

both upon the influence which it has exer- 
cised directly upon the progress of knowledge, 
and indirectly in disciplining the higher facul- 
ties of the mind. It was as great a need in 
Aristotle's time as the inductive method was 
in Bacon's. The work to be done, in the 
state of knowledge in Aristotle's time, was 
to sift the thought accumulated, discover its 
logical dependencies, eliminate, by the princi- 
ple of contradiction, as Socrates did in his 
conversations with the Sophists, apparent 
errors, and retain what would stand the test 
of logical principles. The time had not 
arrived for the inductive method of objective 
observation and material illation. This we 
will endeavour to elucidate. 

All thinking is either materially false, or 
formally false, or both. We have shown, 
that there was much material falseness in 
ancient philosophy; as the notions which 
formed its matter were the result of unscien- 
tific observation. But this was not the only 
vice of ancient philosophy. There was in it, 
also, a great deal of formal or logical false- 
ness; and, until this was corrected, the time 
had not come for correcting its other vice. 
3* 



38 PROGKESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Even in so profound a thinker as Plato, there 
are paralogisms of every kind so gross as to 
astonish the modern mind not familiar with 
tne looseness of ancient thought. The very 
ingenuity of the Greek mind led to sophisms. 
And many of these sophisms, which are seen 
by the modern mind to be a mere play of wit 
and acuteness, were deemed very important 
by some of the most distinguished thinkers 
of antiquity. In ancient times, men lived 
more in public, and carried on scientific in- 
vestigations more in oral discussions, or con- 
versations, than in the soliloquy of private 
meditation. Profundity, therefore, would be 
less valued than wit, dexterity in question- 
ing, and adroit discovery of objections. The 
Sophists were accomplished masters in this 
art. There were, too, certain artificial rules, 
by which their dialogues were regulated. 
Every answer to a question, for instance, was 
to be yes or no. The interrogator, therefore, 
could constrain his adversary to move in a 
foreseen manner. 

Now, as the method of science was not 
understood, men might perceive a fallacy, 
and yet not be able to point it out; for they 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 39 

had not even the requisite language to ex- 
press these fallacies. How compendiously 
does the technical expression, "begging of 
the question/' indicate a common fallacy! 
Such expressions, furnished by logic, not only 
facilitate the exposure of error, but enable us 
to get clearer views of truth. It was, there- 
fore, the first demand of science, that the 
laws of thought should be investigated and 
understood, so that, by their application, fal- 
lacious reasonings might be discovered. This 
Aristotle attempted by considering the reason- 
ings embodied in ancient thought. He saw 
that the clue to the whole scheme of Sophis- 
try, was to discriminate the essence of the in- 
ternal thought from the accident of the ex- 
ternal expression. In this way, he discovered, 
that the syllogism is the one form of reason- 
ing, and that fallacies consist in the covert 
violations of the logical laws which govern 
the syllogism. He developed this doctrine 
into the greatest monument of speculative 
genius which illustrates the history of philoso- 
phy. The great purpose of the Aristotelic 
logic, was to purge the understanding, and to 
keep it free of those errors which arise from 



40 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the confusion and perplexity of inconsequent 
thinking. 

The purpose of this tract forbids any more 
extended review of the doctrines of the 
followers of Socrates. Plato and Aristotle 
rise so far above all others, in the importance 
of their contributions to the progress of 
philosophy, that, in a sketch like this, an 
examination of their doctrines must sufiice. 

The Romans were not acquainted with 
philosophy until after their conquest of 
Greece; and they never did succeed in specu- 
lative inquiries. Cicero reproduced and de- 
veloped the moral philosophy of the Greeks, 
and, carrying the spirit of the orator into 
philosophy, he clothed it in the grand ha- 
biliments of the eloquence nurtured amidst 
the meditative shades of Tusculum. ^^Hanc 
enim perfectam jphilosopJiiam (says Cicero), 
semper judicavi quce de maximis qucestionibus 
copiose posset ornateque dicereP But, for the 
most part, philosophy was at Rome degraded 
to a menial to serve personal interests, by dis- 
playing an apparent love of truth in a pre- 
tended devotion to elevated studies. Rome 



ANCIENT PERIOD. 41 

has, therefore, no contribution in the progress 
of philosophy. 

After the Macedonian conquests, Alexan- 
dria became the great focus of learning. 
From its situation, it was the centre of the 
commerce of the world ; many were attracted 
thither by the libraries of the Ptolemies. 
Here met philosophers from the East and the 
AVest; the religious dogmas of Jew and Gen- 
tile, Pagan and Christian, and systems the 
most opposing, met on the same arena. Plo- 
tinus, Proclus, and Porphyry, were the most 
distinguished philosophers of this school. 
Their doctrines were Platonic, and therefore 
the school was called Neoplatonic. Their 
philosophy was, however, a cloudy exhala- 
tion from the vast inundation of the con- 
fluent streams of diverse doctrines which had 
flooded in from many nations. It vanished 
before the light of Christianity. The only 
doctrines of Paganism, which existed after 
this period, were those adopted by the fathers 
of the Christian Church. 

The fathers of the Church devoted little 
attention to philosophy, and still less to 
nature. They gave a preference to Plato, 



42 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

but were adherents of no particular system, 
culling and selecting from all. "God (says 
Chrysostom) did not send men into the world 
to syllogise and form arguments, but to ex- 
pound the truth — not to dispute and contend 
with one another, but to deal out truth with 
impartiality. It was not in philosophical 
arguments that the Apostles interested them- 
selves, but they preached simply and clearly, 
and it is from their example that we are to 
act." And Clement of Alexandria says: 
"What I call philosophy, is not what Plato 
and Aristotle have promulgated, but what 
they have spoken true and favourable to re- 
ligion." Such are the most favourable views 
of philosophy entertained by the fathers of 
the Church. Some of the sects, especially 
the Epicureans and Stoics, they openly at- 
tacked. St. Augustine did more than any 
other of the fathers of the Church to further 
philosophy; but he conformed his doctrines 
to Christianity. 

But this twilight of philosophy at last sunk 
into night in the sixth century, and for seve- 
ral ages there is a blank in the progress of 
speculation. 



MEDIAEVAL PERIOD. 43 



MEDIEVAL PERIOD. 

Our modern philosophy, like our civiliza- 
tion, takes its rise in the middle ages. Its 
character in these ages, is philosophy under 
ecclesiastical authority — pliilosopliia ancillans 
theologice. The middle ages begin when the 
church became disencumbered from the ruins 
of ancient philosophy. This crisis was not 
until the time of Charlemagne. He was 
the vassal of the Pope. He opened schools 
throughout his vast empire; and from these 
philosophy obtained the name Scholastic. 
The clergy were the cultivators of this 
philosophy, and its character is given in the 
nature of its origin, and may be summed up 
in the saying of Joannus Scotus Eregina, 
There are not tioo studies of pliilosopJiy and re- 
ligion^ hut what is true philosophy is also true 
religion. 

The Scholastic philosophy is distributed 
into several epochs or changes. During the 
first, philosophy was under absolute subordi- 
nation to religion; during the second, the 
subordination was softened down to an alii- 



I 



44 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ance; and in the third, a separation took 
place, indistinct at first, but finally more 
discriminating; and at last, terminating in 
modern philosophy. 

The rampant spirit of physical inquiry in 
this age, is too prone to look back at the 
schoolmen as mere logical knight-errants, and 
their philosophy as logic run mad, because it 
did not advance physical science. Because 
the schoolmen, not perceiving the relativity 
of general terms, and that they afford no 
irrespective objects, wasted so much time in 
disputes about Nominalism and Realism; and 
not discriminating the primary and secondary 
qualities of matter, and therefore not perceiv- 
ing that the words denoting the secondary 
qualities were ambiguously applied both to 
the knowing mind and the object known, dis- 
puted, whether fire is hot, sugar sweet, grass 
green, and other like questions; it has been 
concluded that all their discussions Avere idle 
disputes of mere words. And because they 
were subject in all their judgments to the 
Church, as recognized arbiter, it has been sup- 
posed that all the doctrine,:^ of the schoolmen 
were the blind opinions ordered by the un- 



MEDIEVAL PERIOD. 45 

reasoned decrees of the ecclesiastical hier- 
archy. In these conclusions there is great 
error; for, with all the circumscription of the 
Church, there was ample scope left for the 
loftiest speculations. Though the authority 
of the Church was imperative when it issued 
its mandate, yet it left a large proportion of 
the problems of philosophical theology unde- 
termined; and questions which, among Pro- 
testants, would cause a difference of sects, 
were decided in either alternative without 
impairing the orthodoxy of the parties. The 
fact is, that the faculties of the human mind 
were never more vigorously exerted (just as 
is the case with lawyers, though their dis- 
cussions move, too, within the limits of au- 
thority), than during the middle ages by the 
schoolmen; though often on trivial questions, 
with trivial results, but often on important 
questions, with important results. 

We are indebted to the schoolmen for much 
of the analysis which shows from the nature 
of the thing that the formal laws of thought 
are the adequate object-matter of logic. We 
are also indebted to them for the proper scien- 
tific definition of truth, as the corresjpcmdence 

4 



46 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

or agreement of a cognition or a cognitive act 
of tlioiight loith its object. The schoolmen did 
also much towards fitting the modern lan- 
guages for philosophical thinking. The great 
problem of philosophy is, to analyze the con- 
tents of our acts of knowledge or our cogni- 
tions, and discriminate what elements have 
been contributed by the knowing subject and 
by the object known. There must, therefore, 
be terms adequate to designate these correla- 
tive opposites, and discriminate the share 
each has in the total cognition. The exact 
distinction of subject and object was first made 
by the schoolmen. This distinction involves 
the whole science of mind; for this science is 
nothing more than the articulate discrimina- 
tion of the subjective and the objective, in 
themselves and in their mutual relations. 
The two opposite nouns, subject and object^ 
and the corresponding adjectives, subjective 
and objective^ taken together and correla- 
tively, enable us to designate the primary 
and most important antithesis of philosophy 
in the most precise and complete manner. 
Therefore it is seen that the most important 



MEDIEVAL PEKIOD. 47 

seeds of modern philosophy are to be found 
in the Scholastic. 

The capture of Constantinople by the 
Turks, in the year 1453, scattered over the 
West the learned Greeks of that capital; and 
then it was that philosophy rebelled against 
the supremacy of Aristotle and the Church. 
Philosophy, which had been the mere hand- 
maid of the Church, came now to be cultiva- 
ted for itself. New schools were opened, and 
almost every school of antiquity had its sup- 
porters. Europe beheld the revival of the 
Academy, the Lyceum, and the Porch. The 
system which first rose into greatest repute 
was the Platonic, contaminated with many 
mysteries of the Alexandrian fathers. But 
there arose a sect of independent thinkers, 
whose doctrines were subversive of even the 
spirituality of God and man. Cardamus, Tu- 
lesimus, Beregard, Cesalpinus, and Yerini, 
present a group of philosophers who cannot 
be classed under any particular sect. They 
launched out into speculations which we are 
forced to admire for their vigour and inde- 
pendence. Skepticism had its supporters, at 
this time, in Montaigne and others. But the 



48 PROGKESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

whole philosophy of this age, was a mere re- 
flex of that of antiquity. The want of method 
was the fundamental defect; and exclusive 
deference to authority was the great impedi- 
ment to mental progress. It is difficult for 
us, in this age of free thought and speech, 
to realize the extreme submission to the au- 
thority of the Church, when that authority 
was exerted, and the absolute deference paid 
to Aristotle, during the scholastic period. 
The two great ends to be accomplished, in 
order to set free the human mind, were to 
discover a better method of philosophizing, 
and to shake off the yoke of authority. 



MODERN PERIOD. 

Scholasticism had turned away the minds 
of thinkers from nature. But now, nature 
begun to receive a remarkable degree of at- 
tention. The discovery of America, and of 
the passage to the East Indies, had widened 
the scope of view; and the discoveries of 
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, had carried 



MODERN PERIOD. 49 

the thoughts of men beyond the limits of 
tradition and authorit}^, and given an entirely 
new direction to the thinking of the age. 
These discoveries refuted a series of tradi- 
tional errors and prejudices^ and gave the 
thinking mind a self-dependence which caused 
it to break loose from the fetters of authority, 
and place itself upon the basis of observation 
and experiment, inquiry and proof. 

At this juncture in the progress of thought, 
the most majestic and prophetic mind known 
to the history of philosophy, rose up to lead 
men in the new career of investigation which 
had been begun. Trained in the practice of 
a jurisprudence the most technical, and in 
its routine the most servile, and the most 
obedient to authority and traditional usage 
of any which has been established amongst 
men, we see the remarkable spectacle of a 
Lord Chancellor of England laying aside, for 
the moment, the king's seals, to become the 
keeper of the seals of nature. And in a 
majesty of diction unparalleled in the history 
of philosophy, this great thinker proclaimed 
to the world a new method of philosophizing 
to guide, the mighty spirit of inquiry which 
4* 



50 PKOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

was abroad, over the fields of observation. 
Philosophy, no longer confined to the schools, 
is led forth by a politician and lawyer, out 
from the confines of authority into the ampli- 
tudes of nature. From this moment, the 
freedom of the human mind was established. 
This man of business, this accomplished cour- 
tier, this cunning lawyer, this consummate 
orator, this leader in the affairs of the world, 
appears on the stage of philosophical thought, 
with a more comprehensive grasp of thinking 
and a greater forecast, than any one of even 
the many trained especially to philosophy, 
who had preceded him. It is, at once, mani- 
fest to the eye of history, that a great revo- 
lution in the modes of philosophical thinking 
has been accomplished; and that henceforth 
philosophy is to pursue new paths. The 
power of the schools is gone, and that of the 
individual is asserted and established. Au- 
thority can no longer prevail against reason. 

The revolution which Bacon effected is 
analogous to that accomplished by Socrates; 
for as the latter was said to bring down phi- 
losophy from heaven to earth, so the former 
may be said to have brought philosophy from 



MODERN PERIOD. 5L 

books and tradition to nature. The philoso- 
phy of antiquity, Bacon showed, leaped at 
once to the highest generalizations or laws, 
without attending to those intervening par- 
ticulars, through which we must pass to 
arrive at a perfect generalization. Its method 
was a treacherous logic, as we have shown, 
which limited everything to the mechanism 
of language; and as words serve only as 
registers of our thoughts, our doctrines cannot 
be exempt from error, unless we determine 
the original notions for ourselves. It is, 
therefore, says Bacon, necessary to purge the 
mind of these errors which it has imbibed. 
He therefore, attempted, what was never at- 
tempted before, a systematic classification of 
the kinds of error. Of these he enumerates 
four, and calls them Idols. The first, he calls 
Idols of the Tribe, being inherent in human 
nature; the second he calls Idols of the Den, 
being those of each individual; the third he 
calls Idols of the Market, being those formed 
from the society of men; the fourth he calls 
Idols of the Theatre, being false notions de- 
rived from systems of philosophy, and the 
contents of popular language. Bacon makes 



52 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

philosophy a mere interpretation of nature, 
and says: "The doctrine of idols bears the 
same relation to the interpretation of nature 
as that of the confutation of sophisms does 
to common logic." Therefore, the first step 
in a true method of philosophizing (interpret- 
ing nature) is to point out "the idols and false 
notions which have already preoccupied the 
human understanding, and are deeply rooted 
in it." The second step is, "the formation of 
notions and axioms on the foundation of true 
induction, which is the only fitting remedy 
by which we can ward ofP and expel these 
idols." 

Bacon points out the difference between 
the ancient method and his own in these 
words: "There are and can exist but two 
ways of investigating and discovering truth. 
The one hurries on rapidly from the senses 
and particulars to the most general axioms; 
and from them as principles, and their sup- 
posed indisputable truth, derives and dis- 
covers the intermediate axioms. This is the 
way now in use. The other constructs its 
axioms from the senses and particulars, by 
ascending continually and gradually, till it 



MODERN PERIOD. 53 

finally arrives at the most general axioms^ 
which is the true but unattempted way." 

It is important to have distinctly in mind 
the precise end which Bacon designed to ac- 
complish by his new method, or Novum Or- 
ganum. It was manifestly intended to super- 
sede the old method, or Organon of Aristotle. 
Its very name evinces this. Much difficulty, 
however, has been created in regard to this 
question, by making distinctions in logic, 
which neither Aristotle nor Bacon under- 
stood. Logic has very properly come to be 
distinguished into pure and concrete or modi- 
fied logic. Pure logic is conversant about 
the form of thought; concrete logic is con- 
versant about the form of thought as modified 
by the empirical circumstances, external and 
internal, under which man exerts his facul- 
ties. Pure logic, therefore, proposes as its 
end, the formal or logical perfection of 
thought, and has nothing to do with its real 
truth; while the end of concrete logic is real 
or material truth. Now, it has been con- 
tended that Aristotle's logical treatises are of 
pure logic, while Bacon's treatise is of con- 
crete logic ; and that consequently their scopes 



54 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

are entirely different, and the ends intended 
to be accomplished by Aristotle and Bacon 
are different also. In this opinion there is 
some truth and much error. Aristotle had 
no definite, certainly no adequate, notion of 
the distinction between pure and concrete 
logic; and therefore has, throughout the logi- 
cal treatises which have come down to us, 
confounded the two. The end of his logical 
treatises was not merely formal or logical 
truth, but real or material truth also; the 
two not, in fact, being discriminated. It was 
as a means towards real or material truth, 
that Bacon considered the Aristotelic logic; 
and it was in this aspect he designed to super- 
sede it. The whole force of the Novum 
Organum rests upon this fact. The Aristo- 
telic logic had in fact confounded the distinc- 
tion between formal and material truth; and 
it was this very confusion which constituted 
its vice. In consequence of this confusion, it 
was considered a method of philosophizing, a 
means by which new truths could be elicited 
or gathered in. It was, in other words, con- 
sidered creative, and not merely plastic. It 
is true, that Aristotle hangs the whole chain 



MODERN PERIOD. 55 

of our mediate knowledge upon a comprehen- 
sive belief, and maintains that the ultimate 
or primary principles of knowledge are in- 
comprehensible, and rest in a blind, passive 
faith. Yet, such seenis to have been his no- 
tion of the scope of syllogistic reasoning, 
that, somehow or other, as we have already 
said, he makes it independent of induction; 
and in this seems to ignore his principle of 
primary beliefs. At all events, he has left 
the relation and correlation of syllogism and 
induction so confused, and his psychological, 
metaphysical, and logical doctrines so ill ad- 
justed, that we feel warranted in saying that 
Aristotle confounded formal and concrete 
logic, and formal and material truth. Bacon, 
therefore, viewing the Aristotelic logic as a 
method of philosophizing, of searching for 
material truth, attempted to supersede it in 
that purpose : but to leave it as a means of 
formal truth, of discussing questions about 
which there was no dispute as to the data. 
This was certainly Bacon's view and purpose. 
His whole doctrine of method is directed to 
the contents, and not to the form of thought 
— to the matter, and not to the consecution, 



6Q PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of our thinking. It is from this point of 
view we must look at the Novum Organum 
to appreciate it. 

The great fallacy which Bacon directed his 
hostility against, as the one which especially 
vitiated ancient philosophy, is the commuta- 
tion of the subjective with the objective. All 
the errors which Bacon classified as Idols are 
subjective illusions, which had been commuted 
in the ancient philosophy with objective re- 
alities. This fallacy manifests itself in two 
ways. The one is to assume that the notions 
of things contained in common language are 
correct and complete interpretations of nature, 
and that the true mode of building up science 
is to analyze these notions, and combine them 
in their logical relations, because the logical 
relations of the notions will correspond with 
the real relations of their objects. The 
other way is to assume that there are general 
notions or principles, which are an original 
furniture of the mind, or are remembered 
from another state of existence, and that 
nature must conform in its manifestations to 
these ideas, and that by considering these 
ideas we can interpret nature. Both of these 



MODERN PERIOD. 57 

manifestations of this cardinal error are, as 
we have shown in our re^dew of ancient phi- 
losophy, at bottom the same. That its true 
character is the commuting of the subjective 
with the objective, is manifest in the con- 
sideration, that as a notion is the joint pro- 
duct of the action of the subject and object, 
it follows that whatever a notion contains not 
corresponding with the object, must be the 
contribution of the thinking subject alone; 
and if the notion be only a partial interpreta- 
tion of the object, but is considered complete, 
it is still mistaking an ideal illusion for a real 
object. The grand error of the ancient phi- 
losophy was to combine, and by syllogistic or 
deductive reasoning develop, these subjective 
illusions into systems supposed to be explana- 
tions of objective realities. 

The whole scope and end of Bacon's method 
was, therefore, real or material truth. And 
here the question arises, what is truth? The 
schoolmen, as we have already shown, have 
given an answer which is now acquiesced in 
as correct. Truth is the correspondence or 
agreement hetween our thought and its object — 
hetioeen our thought and lohat ive think about. 

5 



58 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

The Baconian method was especially directed 
to maintain this view of truth. " For we are 
founding (says Bacon) a real model of the 
world in the understanding; such as it is 
found to be, not such as man's reason has dis- 
torted." Again he says : " We neither dedi- 
cate nor raise a capitol or pyramid to the 
pride of man, but rear a holy temple in his 
mind, on the model of the universe, which 
model we imitate." And still further: "Let 
men learn the difference that exists between 
the idols of the human mind and the ideas 
in the divine mind. The former are mere 
arbitrary abstractions; the latter, the true 
marks of the Creator on his creatures, as 
they are imprinted on and defined in matter 
by true and exquisite touches." It was, 
therefore, to the objective world that Bacon 
especially directed attention, so as to secure 
the mind from the vice of the ancient philoso- 
phy — of commuting the subjective with the 
objective — of substituting the fictions of the 
imagination for the realities of nature. 

As, then. Bacon's method has in view the 
advancement of the real sciences, it may be 
well, for the sake of precision, to state what 



MODERN PERIOD. 59 

are the objects of these sciences, as, according 
to the view of truth above given, the corres- 
pondence between these sciences as systems 
of thought and their respective objects consti- 
tute their truth. 

The real sciences are sciences of fact; for 
the point of departure from which they set 
out is always a fact, a presentation of mind. 
Some of these rest upon the presentations of 
self-consciousness, and these are facts of mind. 
Others rest upon presentations of sensitive 
perception, and these are facts of nature. 
The former are the mental sciences; the 
latter are the natural sciences. The facts 
of mind are given partly as contingent and 
partly as necessary. The latter, the ne- 
cessary, are universal virtually and in them- 
selves; the former only obtain a factitious 
universality by a process of generalization. 
The facts of nature, whether necessary in 
themselves or not, are given to us only 
as contingent and isolated phenomena, and 
therefore have only that empirical generality 
which we bestow on them by classification. 

Now, it is with the facts of nature that 
Bacon's method, as developed by himself, 



60 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

more especially deals. The great end of his 
Novum Organum, therefore, is to ascertain 
that empirical generality, or factitious uni- 
versality, amongst isolated phenomena of 
nature, which is accomplished by classifica- 
tion; for it is only in this way, according to 
Bacon, that man can bring the immensity of 
nature within the scope of his knowledge. 

In accordance with this view of philoso- 
phy, particulars or individuals become the 
important objects of consideration in the Ba- 
conion method. And Bacon, in the face of 
ancient philosophy, which busied itself about 
universals, had to defend the study of par- 
ticulars in these words : " With regard to the 
meanness or even filthiness, of particulars? 
for which (as Pliny observed) an apology is 
requisite, such subjects are no less worthy of 
admission into natural history than the most 
magnificent and costly; nor do they at all 
pollute natural history, for the sun enters 
alike the palace and the privy, and is not 
thereby polluted. For that which is deserv- 
ing of existence is deserving of knowledge, 
the image of existence." 

As, then, particulars are the primary objects 



MODERN PERIOD. 61 

of the Baconian method, this method must 
begin with the senses. Accordingly, Bacon 
says, "We must guide our steps by a clue, 
and the whole path, from the very first per- 
ceptions of our senses, must be secured by a 
determined method." And he enounces his 
method in these words: "It ought to be 
eternally resolved and settled, that the under- 
standing cannot decide otherwise than by in- 
duction, and a legitimate form of it." 

Here the question emerges, loliat is induc- 
tion? Bacon had not a very discriminate 
notion of it. In the procedure which he 
calls induction, or rather by which he exem- 
plifies it, he confuses analysis and synthesis, 
and does not even sufficiently discriminate 
between observation and induction; as he in- 
cludes, in what he calls induction, the objec- 
tive process of investigating individual facts 
as preparatory to illation, as well as the illa- 
tion from the singular to the universal. Nor 
has any writer, as far as we know, sufficiently 
explained and exemplified induction. The 
loosest notions are entertained on the subject. 
By the best writers, induction is said to be 
analytical, whereas it is synthetical. This 
5* 



62 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

confusion, however, often arises from the con- 
fused and even contradictory notions which 
are entertained of analysis and synthesis. 
The process, which by some is called analysis^ 
is called synthesis by others, and vice versa. 
These discrepancies and contradictions we 
will endeavour to explain, and found upon 
the explanation a more accurate determina- 
tion of induction. 

There is and can be but one method in 
philosophy; and what have been called the 
different and more or less perfect methods, 
are merely dijBferent applications of this one 
method to the objects of knowledge. Method 
is a rational progress — a progress of the mind 
towards an end; and method in philosophy 
signifies the progress conducive to the end 
which philosophy proposes. The ends of 
philosophy are two — the first being the dis- 
covery of causes; and the second, the resolu- 
tion of things into unity. These ends, how- 
ever, fall into one ; as the higher we ascend in 
the discovery of causes, we approximate the 
nearer to unity. The detection of the one 
in the many is, therefore, the end to which 
philosophy tends continually to approximate. 



MODERN PERIOD. 63 

What the method in philosophy is, will appear 
the more clearly, if, in the first place, we con- 
sider philosophy in relation to its first end — 
the discovery of causes. 

Causes,* taking the name for a sjraonym of 
that without which their efiect would not be 
— and they are only coeflScient elements of 
their effect; and effect is the combination of 
these primary elements to which we give the 
name of causes, and the concurrence of which 
gives existence to the effect. The acid and 
the alkali, for example, are the causes of the 
neutral salt, and also its coefiicient elements. 
To the elements we give the name causes ; to 
the combination, we give the name effect. 
Now, as it is by experience we discover what 
causes are necessary for the production of an 
effect, it follows that the only way by which 
we can attain to the knowledge of causes, as 
causes, is in and through their effect; and 
the only way we can become aware of their 
effect, as effect, is in and through its causes. 
In as far, therefore, as philosophy is the re- 
search of causes, the only necessary condition 

* The metaphysical doctrine of causation is con- 
sidered in the second part of this tract. 



64 PKOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of the possibility of philosophy is decomposi- 
tion. The decomposition of effects into their 
causes is called analysis. In its philosophical 
signification it means the separation of the 
parts of any complex whole. 

But, though analysis is the fundamental 
process, it is not the only one. We analyze 
only that we may comprehend the objects; 
and we can comprehend only as we are able 
to reconstruct, in thought, if not in reality, 
what has been decomposed. This mental re- 
construction is, therefore, the final procedure 
in philosophy, and is called synthesis. Of 
these two processes, the former is called the 
regressive, as ascending from effects to causes ; 
the latter is called the progressive, as de- 
scending from causes to efiects. These two 
processes are the necessary parts of one 
method, and are relative and correlative of 
each other. Analysis, without synthesis, is 
only a begun knowledge. Synthesis, without 
analysis, is no knowledge at all; for synthesis 
receives from analysis whatever elements it 
recomposes. Synthesis supposes analysis as 
the prerequisite of its existence, and is de- 
pendent on it for the qualities of its existence ; 



MODERN PERIOD. 65 

for the value of every synthesis depends on 
the value of the foregone analysis. If the 
elements furnished by analysis be assumed, 
or not really discovered, the synthesis will, 
at best, be but a conjectural theory; and if 
the analysis be false, so will be the synthesis. 
The legitimacy of every synthesis, therefore, 
depends on the legitimacy of the analysis 
which it presupposes. These two relative 
procedures are thus equally necessary to each 
other in the acquisition of knowledge, and 
are as indispensable to the existence of phi- 
losophy as the processes of inspiration and 
expiration are to animal life. It is, however, 
to analysis that the preeminence is due, if to 
either; for though it be only a commence- 
ment, yet it is the preferable, inasmuch as it 
lays the foundation for synthesis; whereas 
synthesis without analysis is radically void. 

As regards, therefore, the first end of phi- 
losophy — the discovery of causes — there is 
only one possible method, of which analysis 
is the foundation, and synthesis the com- 
pletion. 

Considering philosophy in relation to its 
second end — the resolution of our knowledge 



6Q PROGRESS OP PHILOSOPHY. 

into unity — the same doctrine is equally ap- 
parent. Everything presented to our con- 
sideration in the external or internal word — 
whether through the medium of sense, or of 
self-consciousness — is presented in complexity . 
The senses present objects in multitudes, in 
each of which there is a congeries of many 
various qualities; and the same holds true of 
the presentations of self-consciousness, since 
every modification of mind is a complex state, 
and the different elements of each state mani- 
fest themselves in and through each other. 
Thus there is nothing but multiplicity pre- 
sented to us. And our faculties are so limited, 
that they are able to take in only one object 
or combination, and that the very simplest, 
at a time. It is therefore only by analysis 
and synthesis that multiplicity can be brought 
into unity. In fact, the search for a cause, 
and the search for unity in cases where the 
notion of cause does not enter, are both 
governed by the same regulative principle — 
the principle or law of identity in its empiri- 
cal application — as we shall show presently. 

We see, then, that in any actual investiga- 
tion, analysis and synthesis are necessarily 



MODERN PERIOD. 67 

used interdependently and interchangeably. 
They cannot be separated; and the two 
together make up the one method of philoso- 
phy. This method, according to Bacon, is 
observation and induction. As, then, analy- 
sis and synthesis constitute the one method, 
and observation and induction constitute it 
also, it behooves us to correlate analysis 
and synthesis with observation and induc- 
tion. Before, however, we do this, let us 
give an articulate discrimination between ob- 
servation and induction. 

There are two ways by which we may 
become acquainted with things. In the first 
place, we may know a thing as simply exist- 
ing. This is the knowledge of what simply 
is — of facts known in our own experience or 
that of others — and is called empirical or his- 
torical knowledge ; for history is properly only 
the narration of a consecutive series of phe- 
nomena in time. It comprises all that infor- 
mation which we obtain from the physical 
world by sense, and from the mental world 
by self-consciousness. The process by which 
this degree or sort of knowledge is obtained, 
is what Bacon means by observation; and it 



68 PKOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

manifestly involves both analysis and syn- 
thesis. The knowledge obtained in this way 
iSj however, not philosophy. It requires an- 
other process to elevate it to that dignity. 

Let uSj then, consider the second way by 
which we may know things. The mind is 
so constituted, that it cannot perceive the ex- 
istence of anything without referring it to 
something else as its cause, and without 
which it could not have existed. Things do 
not occur isolated from each other. There is 
no phenomenon but is the eJBfect of some 
cause. Thus, when we see a rainbow, we 
may, in a certain sense, be said to know it; 
but with such knowledge, the mind does not 
rest satisfied ; and it is only when we discover 
that the phenomenon depends on the reflec- 
tion and refraction of light, by the rain fall- 
ing from a cloud opposite the sun, that we 
can be said fully to know it. This is done 
by inferring from the analogies that the re- 
flection and refraction of light is the cause, 
and then by mathematical reasoning deducing 
from the known laws of reflection and refrac- 
tion, the breadth of the coloured arch, the 
diameter of the circle of which it is part, and 



MODERN PERIOD. 69 

the relation of the latter to the place of the 
spectator and of the sun, and finding all these 
to come out of the calculus just as they are 
observed in nature. This knowledge of the 
cause of a phenomenon is something more 
than that phenomenon considered simply as 
a fact, and constitutes the second way in 
which we may be said to knoAV anything, 
and is called philosophical, scientific, or ra- 
tional knowledge — the knowledge of effects, 
as dependent on their causes. Now, into the 
procedure of acquiring this sort or degree of 
knowledge, induction as well as observation 
enters. The process by which the reflection 
and refraction of hght are inferred or assigned 
as the cause of the rainbow, is induction, and 
is synthetic; for it brings the phenomenon of 
the rainbow under the laws of light — binds 
it with other phenomena of the same sort — 
is an illation from an individual or particular 
to a class, from a singular to a universal. It 
is seen, and we selected it for that reason, 
that in the instance given, induction is aided 
by mathematical deduction, but only aided 
by it; for the illation is purely inductive, and 
is assumed as true in the mathematical deduc- 

6 



70 PKOGKESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tion, and only verified or confirmed by it; for 
mathematics does not take the physical sci- 
ences out of the pale of induction, but only 
aids induction. That induction is synthetic, 
all the discoveries in science show. From 
our limited experience that some bodies gravi- 
tate, we infer that all bodies gravitate. Here 
the mind binds up the several facts of observa- 
tion into a whole — as it were, reconstructs an 
analysis; this is certainly synthetic. Induc- 
tion is therefore clearly synthetic, and not 
analytic, as it has sometimes been said to be. 
It has sometimes been called both analytic 
and synthetic, especially by the mathematical 
physicists. When the procedure is from 
efiects to causes it is called analytic, but 
when the procedure is from an ascertained 
cause to the explanation, by it, of analogous 
or resembling phenomena or efiects, it is called 
synthetic. These procedures correspond with 
Bacon's, or rather are Bacon's ascending and 
descending scales of induction. This nomen- 
clature is adopted, because the last procedure, 
which is also called deductive, is apparently 
the reverse of the first — the mere retracing 
of the same steps from the cause back to the 



MODERN PERIOD. 71 

same effects from which it was inferred; 
whereas other effects, analogous to those from 
which the cause has been inferred, are at- 
tempted to be brought within the same cause 
and explained by it. As the first process is 
called analytic, this is called synthetic. But 
at bottom both are synthetic, as they are both 
induction viewed from opposite points.* 

It is seen, then, that method, in its univer- 
sality, consists of two processes, analysis and 
synthesis, which are relative to, and comple- 
mentary of, each other. 

As philosophy has only one possible me- 
thod, so the history of philosophy only shows 
the more or less imperfect application of this 
one method. It presents many aberrations in 
the method, but none from it. There never 
has been an attempt at philosophy where ana- 
lysis and synthesis were not both used. But 
sometimes the one, and sometimes the other, 

* It should be remarked, that the terms analysis and 
synthesis, which have been derived from the mathema- 
ticians, are sometimes reversed ; the first being applied, 
by some, to the process to which the latter is applied 
by others ; and vice versa. But this is not the occasion 
to explain this confusion. 



72 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

has predominated ; they have not been kept 
in due correlation in their employment. The 
ancient philosophy is especially defective, by 
the meagre employment of analysis. The 
analysis of phenomena were partial, and the 
synthesis consequently one-sided, and errone- 
ous. The analysis of the early Greek physi- 
cal philosophers, of whom we have spoken, 
who, fixing upon one or more elements as su- 
perior to all others, such as water or air, was 
partial ; and consequently the synthesis, that 
it was the principle of all things, was one- 
sided and erroneous. Bacon has exhibited 
the deficiency of the physics of Aristotle in 
analysis, when he says : " Nor is much stress 
to be laid on his frequent recourse to experi- 
ment, in his books on animals, his problems 
and other treatises; for he had already de- 
cided, without having properly consulted expe- 
rience as the basis of decisions and axioms; 
and, after having so decided, he drags experi- 
ment along as a captive constrained to accom- 
modate herself to his decisions." And of the 
empiric school, as he calls it, he says, their 
dogmas are founded "in the confined obscu- 
rity of a few experiments." We have, in our 



MODERN PERIOD. 73 

review of ancient philosophy, shown that it 
was founded on the crude analysis contained 
in the language of the people. The great pre- 
cept of the Baconian method is : Do not hurry 
to a synthetic induction from an imperfect ana- 
lysis^ a narrcno observation; hut let your analy- 
sis he complete. 

Here emerges the question, hou3 are we to 
observe ? In order to scientific knowledge, as 
we have described it, observation must become 
or turn into inquiry. We must question na- 
ture ; but a question implies some knowledge 
of the thing inquired about. How, then, are 
we to inquire of nature, unless we have some 
intimation of her secrets — the human mind 
having no a priori clue to them? The ques- 
tions put to nature must, too, be particular or 
leading questions. 

The questioning of nature springs out of 
observation, by nature herself disclosing to us 
some clue to the secret. When we observe a 
certain correspondence among a number of 
objects or phenomena, we are determined by 
a principle of our intellectual nature to sup- 
pose the existence of a more extensive cor- 
respondence than experience has disclosed, or 
6* 



74 PKOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

perhaps may ever disclose. This judgment, 
that where much is found accordant, all will 
be found accordant, is the result of an original 
tendency of our nature. It is the inventive 
principle by which we generalize our know- 
ledge. This judgment is first only hypotheti- 
cal — -merely an inventive princijple, which 
prompts us to put questions to nature, based 
upon the supposed truth of the judgment, and 
is called hypothesis. The actual procedure of 
philosophizing, therefore, consists of: 1. Ob- 
servation; 2. Hypothesis; 3. Questioning; 4. 
Induction. This questioning is sometimes 
only the observation of the ordinary course of 
nature. Sometimes it is experiment; for, 
says Bacon, "the secrets of nature betray 
themselves more readily when tormented by 
art, than when left to their own course." If 
the answers accord with the first inference — 
the hypothesis which prompted us to put the 
questions — ^it is then assumed as verified, and 
the induction is complete. How many answers 
concurring to the same point amount to proof 
in any case, is beyond the determination of 
any rule. In some cases, a few instances war- 
rant an ijiduction; in others, an immense 



MODERN PERIOD. 75 

number are required to warrant the judgment. 
This difference results from the fact, that 
where the character inquired about is an es- 
sential one, like the lungs in a terrestrial ani- 
mal, a few instances will suffice; but when 
the character is a contingent one, like the 
colour of things, hardly any number of in- 
stances will suffice. And whether a character 
is an essential or a contingent one, is itself a 
question of science, and must be determined 
before it can be used as a principle of evidence 
in induction. 

The presumption, that where much is found 
accordant, all will be found accordant, has 
been considered by philosophers to be of two 
kinds — to be either induction or analogy. 
This seems to us to be erroneous. Though 
induction and analogy are to be distinguished, 
they are not to be distinguished as only rela- 
tives of one kind ; they are not to be consi- 
dered as two processes of reasoning; but in- 
duction is to be considered as the process, and 
analogy as the objective law warranting the 
process. In this view of the subject, induc- 
tion may be defined a material illation of the 
universal from the singular^ warranted either 



76 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

hy the general analogies of nature, or hy the 
special analogies of the object-onatier of any real 
science. The synthetic inference is not neces- 
sitated by a law of thought, but only war- 
ranted by the observed analogies which mere- 
ly incline the judgment. It seems to us, 
therefore, more accurate to make induction 
signify the process^ and analogy or similarity 
signify the evidence on which it is founded; 
for such is the true account of the process, as 
the definition just given indicates. 

In the inductive process, the conclusion is 
always wider than the premises. Whereas, 
in strict demonstration, no conclusion can 
contain more than the premises. In the in- 
ductive process, experience says, this, that, and 
the other body gravitate, and the conclusion 
says, all hodies gravitate. In explanation of 
this, it has been said, that the mind adds 
something of its own, warranting us to draw 
the conclusion. That the affirmation, this, 
that, and the other bodies gravitate, is con- 
nected to the conclusion, all bodies gravitate, 
by inserting between the two another propo- 
sition, to wit : the supposition of the uniformity 
of nature. And that as this supposition is 



MODERN PERIOD. 77 

not the product of induction, it must be in- 
terpolated into all inductive reasoning by the 
mind. And that, therefore, where the rea- 
soning in induction is fully expressed, it will 
stand thus : this, that, and the other body gra- 
vitate; but as nature is uniform in all her 
operations, this, that, and the other body repre- 
sent all bodies : therefore, all bodies gravitate. 
Though this is the most scientific explana- 
tion which has yet been given by any philo- 
sopher, we feel constrained to demur to it; as, 
to us, it involves a concealed error. The affir- 
mation of the uniformity of nature, which 
seems to be interpolated in inductive reason- 
ing, can be resolved into something simpler, 
which makes the process accord with the great 
mental law, that thought is always under the 
antithesis of subject and ohject; and that in the 
products or conclusions of thought, nothing is 
contained as objective which was not objective in 
the process of thinking. In other words, the 
laws of intelligence never warrant an illusive 
interpolation of the objective for the subjec- 
tive, as it must do if the uniformity of nature 
is predicated in the inductive illation. The 
veracity of human consciousness would cer- 



78 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tainly seem to require this view — otherwise 
the mind practises illusions upon itself, imder 
the truest conformity to its own laws. We 
think this supposed uniformity of nature may 
be resolved into identity objectively perceived 
in nature. Thus, the principle of uniformity 
will thereby be resolved into the law of iden- 
tity. This we will now show. 

There are but three ultimate laws of intel- 
ligence : 1. The law of Identity; 2. The law 
of Contradiction; 3. The law of Excluded 
Middle ; and a corollary from these, the law 
of reason and consequent. Now, reason, whe- 
ther exerted in deductive or inductive (in 
apodictic or hypothetical) judgments, must 
always be regulated by the same laws. In 
other words, the laws of thought are the same 
in the deductive and the inductive processes; 
only that in the deductive (apodictic) they 
are absolute, and in the inductive (hypotheti- 
cal) they are modified by empirical circum- 
stances. The laws of thought alone determine 
the deductive process, necessitating the con- 
clusion ; but the laws of thought, modified by 
the analogies of nature, determine the induc- 
tive process inclining the judgment. In the 



MODERN PEEIOD. 79 

inductive process, the laws of thought have 
an empirical application. And the law of 
identity is the special one which is gratified 
in the synthetic illation by which the analo- 
gies are unified into identity. Objects which 
determine undistinguishable impressions upon 
us, are perceived and represented in the same 
mental modification, and are subjectively to 
us precisely as if they were objectively iden- 
tical. When, therefore, a number of objects 
or phenomena are found to possess absolute 
similarity, and their difference is for the time 
lost sight of, their similarity is converted into 
identity, and they are thereby reduced into 
the unity of thought. By the same regula- 
tive law, similar phenomena are referred to 
an identical cause. Analogies or similarities 
are the footprints of identity. And what has 
been supposed to be the assumption of the 
uniformity of nature in every induction, is 
but identity, which the mind affirms upon 
viewing the analogies or similarities; for what- 
ever is identical to consciousness, is so uni- 
formly or universally. It is not, therefore, 
necessary to a theoretical explanation of in- 
duction, to assume, as a superficial analysis 



80 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

seems to warrant, that the uniformity of na- 
ture is affirmed as the major premise, which 
the mind, from the necessity of so thinking, 
interpolates in the reasoning. The mind con- 
siders no such principle. It affirms only what 
it perceives objectively — identity in similarity. 
Some water-fowl have web-feet — not by the 
assumption of the uniformity of nature, but 
by the law of identity^ leads the mind to 
affirm, that all water-fowl have web-feet. It 
is as though the mind had viewed all water- 
fowl. The inductive inference is, in fact, a 
sort of reaffirmation of what has been actu- 
ally observed. If such were not the result of 
the guidance of the law of identity on view- 
ing analogies or similarities, the mind would 
contradict itself — not think at all. For affir- 
mation and negation are the ultimate alterna- 
tives of thought. Therefore, the law of con- 
tradiction combines with the law of identity, 
of which, in fact, it is a phase, in leading to 
the inductive synthesis or totalizing result.* 

* The apparent paradox of identity in diversity con- 
stituted one of the earliest puzzles in metaphysics ; and 
gave origin to a skepticism which denied the possibility 
of uniting two notions in a judgment, which, of course, 



MODERN PERIOD. 81 

The error which we have thus endeavoured 
to expose by a more thorough analysis, results 
from the covert assumption, that syllogistic is 
the only reasoning; and that every general 
assumption which can be found, by reflective 
analysis, to be the condition of a product of 
the mind, must have been realized in con- 
sciousness as connate with the product at the 
time of the genesis of such product. For 
example : as the notion of space is found by 
reflective analysis to be the condition of the 
notion of body, it is supposed that the notion 
was natively latent in the mind, and was eli- 
cited into consciousness in the process of cog- 
nizing an external object; whereas, space or 
extension is cognized objectively as a neces- 
sary element of body, and must be realized in 
the cognition, as contributed by the object and 
not by the subject. The human mind is still 
fettered in philosophical thinking, by the an- 
cient doctrine of universals, and that all 

contravened the validity of the law of identity. Any 
objection to our explanation of empirical thinking under 
the law of identity, will be only a revival of the old 
skepticism which objected to the apparent paradox in 
the law of identity even in formal thinking or deduction. 

7 



82 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

knowledge is through previous knowledge, 
and based on generals, which it was the great 
purpose of Bacon's philosophy to overthrow, 
and to emancipate the human mind to the 
full freedom of a philosophy of observation of 
individual phenomena. 

As hypothesis is the great inventive princi- 
ple of induction, by which, as we have al- 
ready indicated, the questioning of nature is 
conducted, it demands articulate exposition. 
It is in the form of hypothesis that the grand 
heresy of commuting the subjective with the 
objective creeps into philosophy and science. 
Hypothesis is the initial ball, which is rolled 
through the field of observation, accumulating 
only what accords with it, so that the whole 
aggregation will be of the same character with 
the nucleus ; and if what is first set in motion 
be erroneous, so will all that is accumulated. 
In order, then, to prevent the commutation of 
the subjective with the objective, it is neces- 
sary that the hypothetical supposition shall 
be an inference from phenomena, as it always 
is, in that which we have described as the 
normal procedure of induction. The suppo- 
sition or provisional judgment arises upon the 



MODERN PERIOD. 83 

observation of phenomena, and guides our 
questioning of similar phenomena. But the 
great danger is, that our provisional judgment 
be the mere application of a pre-conception, 
like the vortices of Des Cartes in explanation 
of the motions of the heavenly bodies. When 
a phenomenon is presented to us which we can 
explain by no causes within the sphere of our 
experience, we endeavour to recall the out- 
standing phenomenon to unity, by ascribing it 
to some cause or class to which there is a pro- 
bability of its belonging. The great maxim, 
regulative of this procedure, is called the Law 
of Parcemony, and is adequately expressed 
by Sir Wilham Hamilton in these words : 
"Neither more nor more onerous causes are 
to be assumed than are necessary to account 
for the phenomena." In commenting on this 
rule, which had been enounced by Newton, 
Sir William says, it is almost certain that 
Newton, when he says we are to admit no 
causes but such as are true (verse), he meant 
"to denounce the postulation of hypothetical 
facts as media of hypothetical explanation." 
Now, it is not only almost but absolutely cer- 
tain, that this was Newton's meaning : because 



84 PEOGEESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

he explicitly says so in the general scholium 
at the end of his Principia : " I have not been 
able (says he) to discover the cause of these 
properties of gravity from phenomena, and I 
frame no hypotheses ; for whatever is not de- 
duced from phenomena is called hypothesis ; 
and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or 
physical, whether of qualities or mechanical, 
have no place in experimental philosophy. 
In this philosophy, particular propositions are 
inferred from phenomena, and afterwards ren- 
dered general by induction." Here Newton 
makes cause the opposite of hypothesis, and 
astricts hypothesis to mere assumptions not 
deduced from phenomena. He therefore 
means by true causes real causes— the oppo- 
site of supposititious causes. And the Prin- 
cipia is an exemplification of it; for amidst 
all the intricacies of mathematical demonstra- 
tion, Newton, with the most marvellous cau- 
tion and sagacity, never for a moment loses 
sight of phenomena and known causes. In- 
duction is the centre and the circumference 
around and within which the mathematical 
demonstrations revolve. Newton's rule about 
true causes does not, as Dr. Whewell and 



MODERN PERIOD. 85 

others suppose, reject the inquiry into new 
causes. In the questions which Newton was 
considering, the true cause was the first term, 
the one which should be known, and not the 
second, the one unknown, as it always is, in 
a search for new causes. It would be illegiti- 
mate, according to Newton, to assign a subtle 
ether as the cause of the retardation of the 
planetary motions, as its existence is not 
known ; but it would be perfectly legitimate 
as a jpracisional judgment, to infer the exist- 
ence of a subtle ether from the retardation of 
the planets in their orbits. It was legitimate, 
to infer the existence of Leverrier's planet, as 
the cause of the perturbations in Uranus, as 
Si provisional judgment, to be verified by sub- 
sequent observation, as was done ; but to ac- 
count for the perturbations by the existence 
of the planet, would be reversing the order, 
placing the unknown term first in the inquiry, 
and accounting for the known by the unknown. 
Such is the comprehensive and profound 
method — sweeping as it does through all the 
intricacies of the heights and depths of nature 
— which Bacon proclaimed in his Novum Or- 
ganum. ^^ Although (says Newton, in his 



Ob PROGKESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Optics), the arguing from experiments and 
observations, by induction, be no demonstra- 
tion of general conclusions, yet it is the best 
way of arguing which the nature of things 
admits of." And the marvels accomplished 
by this method in unravelling the secrets of 
nature, have long since vindicated it from the 
objections of the ancient Greek skeptics, 
which we noticed in treating of ancient phi- 
losophy. 

Des Cartes comes next in the history of 
philosophy. He was contemporary with Ba- 
con, but thirty years younger. The influence 
for truth of no philosopher has, in our opinion, 
been more overrated. It is, therefore, time 
that his philosophy should be weighed in the 
scales of criticism, and its true value fixed in 
the progress of philosophy. 

From the manner in which our opinions 
are formed, amidst the circumstances of life, 
our supposed knowledge cannot but be a med- 
ley of truths and errors. It is therefore im- 
portant to institute a critical examination of 
the constituents of this knowledge. Des Car- 
tes proposed that we should commence the 
examination by doubting all our opinions. 



MODEKN PERIOD. 87 

Now, this initial or preliminary doubt of Des 
Cartes has always seemed to us, as a practical 
rule, extremely idle. For, let it be observed, 
this preliminary doubt is to be the forerunner 
of any system of truth. The whole contents 
of the mind are to be condemned until their 
truth is established. But how are we to be- 
gin the examination of our judgments ? Not 
at random, of course, but by selecting them 
according to some principle, and arranging 
them in some order and dependence. But the 
distribution of things into their classes is one 
of the most difficult tasks of philosophy, as 
well as one of the last that are accomplished. 
Amongst our opinions there are many which 
can only be tested by profound investigation 
and extensive knowledge. This precept of 
Des Cartes, which is intended to show how 
we are to begin to be a philosopher, requires 
us to be one before we begin. The true pre- 
cept, therefore, is not the unconditional one 
of absolute preliminary doubt, as Des Cartes 
teaches, but a gradual and progressive repre- 
hension of prejudice. We should examine all 
our opinions with the circumspection which 
merely supposes that they contain some truth 



88 PROaRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

combined with much error. All, therefore, of 
value in the preliminary doubt of Des Cartes 
is, that it ignores authority. It implies that 
the judgments bequeathed to us shall not be 
decided by authority, but by a principle supe- 
rior to authority within the sphere of truth — 
the principle of free thought acting within the 
limits prescribed by its own laws, and not 
subordinated to authority, and by it astricted 
to deduce conclusions from such principles as 
authority has admitted or ordained. But all 
this had before been articulately proclaimed 
by Bacon in the Novum Organum, in his 
masterly criticisms of the previous systems of 
philosophy, which he closes in these words : 
"Here, too, we should close the demolishing 
branch of our Instauration, which is com- 
prised in three confutations: 1. The confuta- 
tion of natural human reason left to itself; 2. 
The confutation of demonstration; 3. The 
confutation of theories or received systems of 
philosophy and doctrines." So that, at most, 
the preliminary doubt of Des Cartes is but a 
crumb dropped from the critical doctrines of 
Bacon. 

This doubt of Des Cartes was a preliminary 



MODERN PERIOD. 89 

to the establishment of a system of positive 
doctrine ; for Des Cartes was anything than a 
skeptic. Indeed, he hastened to his conclu- 
sions ; and, as D' Alembert said, " began with 
doubting everything, and ended in believing 
that he had left nothing unexplained." 

How, then, did Des Cartes essay to lay the 
foundation of knowledge ? By reflection, he 
finds a basis for certainty in the fact of thought 
itself; in the fact of the very doubt that per- 
plexes him. For, to doubt is to exist; there- 
fore, the doubt reveals in consciousness both 
thinking and existence. This fundamental 
truth Des Cartes thus expressed: Cogito, ergo 
sum. Thus far, his philosophy is purely sub- 
jective. As yet, the operations of his mind — 
his mere thinking implying his existence — is 
all that he can hold true. Like all modern 
philosophers prior to Eeid, he held that the 
mind possesses no immediate knowledge of 
anything but its own modifications, which the 
mind mistakes for external reality. How 
then, inquires Des Cartes, can it be known 
that external things exist, when the mind has 
no immediate knowledge of their existence ? 
Des Cartes must, ex hypotliesi, find in the 



90 PROGRESS OP PHILOSOPHY. 

mind itself some media of proof for external 
existence. Searching, therefore^ in his mind, 
he finds the idea of God — a perfect intelli- 
gence, eternal, infinite — necessary. This idea, 
he argues, must have an adequate cause, 
which can only be a corresponding being; for 
it cannot be the product of the finite mind. 
Having thus established the existence of God, 
he deduces therefrom the existence of the 
outward world. If God be veracious, he ar- 
gues, it follows that he who is the author of 
the sensible existences, is the author of the 
appearances which induce us to believe their 
existence, and that he would not exhibit these 
appearances as a snare and illusion; conse- 
quently what appears to exist does exist, and 
God himself is the guarantor that it is no 
illusion. 

Now, this argument is wholly invalid. In- 
deed, it proves that God is the author of illu- 
sion. It cannot be denied, that we beHeve 
that the very objects which we perceive exist; 
and not that there is something representative 
of them which alone is perceived, and suggests 
their existence. "We believe in the existence 
of things because we believe that we know 



MODEEN PEKIOD. 91 

them as existing. Now, Des Cartes, by liis 
own theory, was deceived in the belief that 
we see things existing. God, therefore, is the 
author of illusion ; and if the author of this 
deception, the conclusion is the very reverse 
of that drawn by Des Cartes. But his rea- 
soning involves a further fallacy. It assumes, 
that God is veracious. How is this known? 
It can only be known by our faculties of 
knowing. But the argument assumes that 
our faculties are not trustworthy, because we 
believe that we see things existing, and it is 
not so. Therefore, we are not sure of the 
existence of God ; for it rests upon our men- 
dacious faculties. 

Des Cartes, therefore, never got beyond his 
cogito, ergo sum. This is both the beginning 
and the end of his philosophy. The only im- 
portant truth which he signalized is. That the 
ultimate organ of science consists in an appeal 
to the facts of consciousness. But this truth he 
arbitrarily limits to self-consciousness, and as 
arbitrarily applies it to the outward world, 
through the false assumption of an innate 
idea of God; thus creating or assuming a 
chasm where none exists, and then bridging 



92 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

it over with a figment of his imagination. His 
denial of the contemporaneousness of the 
knowledge of one's self and of the outward 
world, at once ignored the possibility of any 
knowledge at all of external nature, and put 
the mind on that track of preposterous specu- 
lation of endeavouring to bridge the imaginary 
chasm between the subjective and the objec- 
tive, which could only, from such a starting- 
point, end in the identification of the last 
with the first ; and thus commute the subjec- 
tive with the objective, to a degree of extra- 
vagance that would make Bacon smile at the 
smallness of the same error in the ancient 
philosophy, which his whole method was de- 
signed to counteract. In the philosophy of 
Des Cartes, in fact, begun that exaltation of 
human reason, which, in the philosophy of 
Schelling and Hegel, ended in the dethrone- 
ment of God and the inauguration of man to 
the sceptre of omniscience. 

The extraordinary influence which the phi- 
losophy of Des Cartes has exerted on modern 
speculation is, therefore, in our judgment, to 
be attributed, rather to its ministering to a 
cardinal weakness of the human mind, the 



MODERN PERIOD. 93 

tendency to a jpidori speculation, than to any 
force of truth in its doctrines or of forecast in 
its regulative principle of method. This me- 
thod is an arbitrary formula, as inapplicable 
in the hunting-ground of investigation as the 
stereotyped forms of the schoolmen. The 
provisional doubt, the assumed conviction that 
truth is possible, and the cogito, ergo sum, as a 
direction to the inquirer, are but a beggarly 
account of empty boxes. It must lead to a 
priori speculation, disjoined from the a poste- 
riori elements of thought, to an unmitigated 
Idealism or Rationalism. Nothing can show 
more clearly the bias of Des Cartes towards a 
demonstrative or rationalistic philosophy, than 
the fact that, in his attempt to express the 
simultaneity and identity of tlie knowing that 
we think, and the hnoioing that we exist, that 
they are hut one indivisihle deliverance of con- 
sciousness, he enunciates it in a form of ex- 
pression which indicates a relation of subordi- 
nation and sequence ; cogito, ergo sum. The 
external expression is certainly an enthymeme 
with a suppressed major, whatever the inter- 
nal thought of the thinker was. The expres- 
sion is certainly not a simple affirmation of 



94 PROaRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the identity of thought and being in the 
sphere of consciousness, but indicates both the 
priority of self in consciousness, and that the 
notion of self and the notion of being are 
found apart and are conjoined through the 
higher principle — wJiat thmhs^ is. This bias 
at the starting-point is impressed on the whole 
Cartesian philosophy. 

In estimating the value of the Cartesian 
philosophy, two things have been confounded, 
which, if not distinguished, must involve us 
in the most perplexing confusions. By no 
one have these two things been more signally 
confounded than by Cousin, the learned and 
brilliant editor of the works of Des Cartes. 
Speaking of two little tracts by Des Cartes, 
he says : " We see in these more unequivo- 
cally the main object of Des Cartes, and the 
spirit of the revolution which has created 
modern philosophy, and placed in the under- 
standing itself the principle of all certainty, 
the point of departure for all legitimate in- 
quiry." The great error in this passage is the 
making "the principle of all certainty, the 
jpoint of departure for all legitimate inquiry." 
This is the germinal vice of the Cartesian 



MODERN PERIOD. 95 

philosophy. In the regressive analysis, by 
which we pass backwards to the basis of cer- 
tainty, we arrive at consciousness as the ulti- 
mate arbiter, the last oracle. But, to make 
this the point of departure, as Des Cartes did, 
for inquiry into philosophy, is erroneous, and 
was the great blunder in the Cartesian me- 
thod. From facts of consciousness, ^^ seeds of 
truth in the mind," as he called them, Des 
Cartes even essayed to project the system of 
the physical universe, and thereby make the 
physical sciences mere educts of the under- 
standing. He restored the ancient method of 
reasoning a priori, from causes to effects. 
Facts of observation must be the starting- 
point in all philosophy, whether mental or 
physical. Des Cartes reversed the scholastic 
proposition, and made it read. Nihil est in 
sensu, quod non fuit prius in intellectu. 

The philosophy of Des Cartes had produced 
upon the thinking of the succeeding age an 
impression adverse to the whole Baconian 
method. It had given an extreme subjective 
turn to thought. This subjective character 
would be the point of attack by any one tak- 
ing the Baconian view of philosophizing. 



96 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Therefore it was that Locke, in the very be- 
ginning of his Essay on the Human Under- 
standing, enters upon the question of the 
origin of our ideas or knowledge. This ques- 
tion involves the problem of the objectivity 
and subjectivity of knowledge. We think, 
therefore, that the criticism of Cousin and 
others, that Locke's method is entirely wrong, 
because of his entering upon this question 
before determining what are the actual pro- 
ducts of thought in the maturely developed 
consciousness, is entirely futile. The origin 
of our knowledge was the problem lying at 
the threshold of the issue between the objec- 
tive method of Bacon and the subjective me- 
thod of Des Cartes. If all science could be 
excogitated a [priori^ out of human reason, 
with some little resort to external observation, 
as Des Cartes maintained, then the Baconian 
method, which placed the possibility of science 
exclusively in the observation of the invaria- 
ble coexistence, and the invariable antece- 
dence and sequence of the phenomena of nature, 
was a grovelling puerility. How, therefore, 
could this antagonism between the subjective 
and the objective methods be determined, but 



MODERN PERIOD. 97 

by considering how far thought is objective, 
and how far subjective? It is in fact a dis- 
cussion of method in its ultimate analysis. 
The discussion of the origin of knowledge was 
demanded by the polemical conditions of 
thought at that day. Progress was impossible 
until the problem was laid open. And how- 
ever weak Locke's discussion of the doctrine 
of innate ideas may be, when viewed under 
the higher light of the present times, it did 
great good in its day. It gave insight into 
the problem of subjectivity, in a form that 
would be appreciated by the largest number 
of minds, and make them ignore the subjec- 
tive method. It matters not, therefore, so far 
as the fortunes of philosophy are concerned, 
whether Des Cartes or any other philosopher 
ever held the doctrine of innate ideas in the 
form in which Locke exhibits it. He chose 
to exhibit the error of subjectivity in such a 
form as that in which — according to his judg- 
ment, and in this we believe he was right — it 
presented itself to most thinkers of those 
times. Indeed, after the most careful consi- 
deration of the subject in all its bearings, we 
cannot but believe that Des Cartes assumed^ 
8* 



98 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

at least in his philosophyj a doctrine of innate 
ideas almost precisely such as Locke presents 
it. It is true, that when Gassendi charged 
upon him the doctrine, much as Locke after- 
wards exhibited it, he swallowed half that he 
had written, and said he only meant by in- 
nate ideas, innate faculties. This, however, 
avails, we confess, nothing with us; for, in 
those parts of his method, where he maintains 
that from a few a jpriori principles assumed as 
facts of consciousness, he could evolve by logi- 
cal deduction what was the mode in which 
suns, planets, water, light, minerals, plants, 
animals — the last, however, he admits, require 
ample experiments — ^must have been, or at 
least may have been successively constituted, 
he certainly assumes a psychological basis of 
thought substantially the same with Locke's 
doctrine of innate ideas. "The order (says 
Des Cartes) I pursued, was this : First, I en- 
deavoured to discover, in general, the princi- 
ples or first causes of everything which is or 
can be in the world, without considering any- 
thing for this purpose, except God alaiie, who has 
created it, nor deducing tlwse principles from 
aught else than frofm certain seeds of truth which 



MODERN PERIOD. 99 

exist naturally in our souls. After that, I ex- 
amined what would be the first and most 
ordinary effects which might be deduced from 
these causes ; and it seems to me that I could 
hence discover heavens, stars, and earth, and 
even upon that earth, water, air, fire, mine- 
rals, and some other things which are the 
most easy to be known." This is but the 
general doctrine of method expounded in the 
writings of Des Cartes. The " seeds of truth," 
existing naturally in the soul, are spoken of 
by Leibnitz and by Cud worth, both of whom 
are Idealists, the first much the same as Des 
Cartes, the latter a little more Platonic ; but 
both maintaining, or at least assuming, a doc- 
trine in its logical import much like the doc- 
trine of innate ideas presented by Locke, 
which, however, be it remembered, Locke 
ascribes to no one in particular. 

We, therefore, dissent from those who think 
Locke's discussion of innate ideas of little im- 
portance in the progress of philosophy; but, 
with the qualifications which we have stated, 
we are ready to admit that Locke's philoso- 
phy is weak on its negative side — its hostile 
discussion of the a priori element of human 



100 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

thought. But on its positive side^ its account 
of the origin of our ideas or knowledge, it is 
all that could have been expected in his time. 
From the fact, that Locke opposed with so 
much earnestness the doctrine of innate ideas, 
he has been represented, by many, as a pure 
Sensationalist, one who believes that all our 
knowledge is derived from or through the 
senses. A more erroneous interpretation of 
an author was never recorded in the pages of 
criticism. The blunder is a marvel of misap- 
prehension. However far Locke's account of 
the origin of our ideas may fall short of the 
whole truth, as we readily admit it does, it 
certainly, in the most explicit manner, main- 
tains that our ideas are derived from two 
sources, sensation or sensitive perception, and 
reflection or self-consciousness. '^External 
objects (says Locke) furnish the mind with 
ideas of sensible qualities; and the mind fur- 
nishes the understanding with the ideas of its 
own operations. The understanding seems 
to me not to have the least glimmering of 
any ideas which it doth not receive from one 
of these two sources." How criticism has 
brought itself to interpret this and number- 



MODERN PERIOD. 101 

less other passages, in which Locke distinctly 
and carefully affirms that there are two dif- 
ferent sources of our ideas, sensation and re- 
flection, so as to make Locke resolve them 
into one, is strange enough, and but evinces 
the perversity of human judgment. And 
Cousin, with all the light to the contrary, 
which Dugald Stewart, in his Preliminary 
Dissertation, had shed upon the question, 
pronounces Locke a Sensationalist. Enslaved 
by the spirit of a system which required him 
to find in Locke the root of the Sensationalism 
of the eighteenth century, he says : "Locke is 
the father of the whole Sensualistic school of 
the eighteenth century. He is incontestably, 
in time as well as genius, the first metaphysi- 
cian of this school." The vile Sensualism or 
Sensationalism of Condillac and Cabanis is thus 
made a justifiable extension of Locke's phi- 
losophy — fruit springing legitimately from 
the germ which Locke planted in the fields 
of thought. And prone, with a predisposi- 
tion, increased by the heat of progress, to 
exaggerate every indication of Sensational- 
ism in the writings of Locke, he maintains 
that Locke makes an interval between the 



102 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

time of acquiring the ideas of sensation and 
those of reflection; and thus opens the way 
for the theory of ^^transformed sensations" — 
of sensation as the sole principle of all the 
operations of the soul. This is a shallow 
criticism. The purpose of Locke was to 
rescue philosophy from subjectivity, and turn 
observation upon the objective. Whether by 
innate ideas Des Cartes meant something co- 
eval in its existence with the mind to which 
it belongs, and illuminating the understand- 
ing before the external senses begin to ope- 
rate, or not, as Locke supposed, certainly the 
great tendency of his philosophy was to com- 
mute the subjective with the objective — to 
lead to a high a priori philosophy and science 
— ^to turn back the Baconian movement by 
reversing its method. The task, therefore, 
of Locke's philosophy was to restore the Ba- 
conian method by developing its psychologi- 
cal basis. Therefore, repudiating all know- 
ledges prior to experience beginning in the 
senses, Locke says : " If it be demanded when 
a man begins to have any ideas, I think the 
true answer is, when he first has any sensa- 
tion. I conceive that ideas in the under- 



MODERN PERIOD. 103 

standing are coeval with sensation." Locke 
then enounces two sources of ideas, in the 
passage which we have already quoted; and, 
in accordance with the principle that sensa- 
tion is prior to all ideas in the understanding, 
he treats of the ideas of sensation first, and 
of reflection second; being induced to do this 
bj the great purpose of his philosophy — to 
throw observation upon external nature. 
But that Locke meant to assert that there is 
an interval of time between our knowledge 
of matter and of mind, cannot be maintained; 
and least of all, that the hwwledge of matter 
lias the 'priority. It really mortifies us that 
these stale criticisms, which make Locke a 
mere Sensationalist, should be written anew 
in the history of philosophy by a countryman 
of Locke's at this late day. Mr. Morell has, 
as it were, permitted Cousin to hold his hand 
while he writes the history of philosophy. 
He has, therefore, divided all philosophers 
into two classes, Sensationalists and Idealists. 
This division is based upon the supposition, 
that Eclecticism is the true account of the 
development of philosophy. This view of 
the development of philosophy, taught him 



104 PROaRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

by Cousin^ led him to follow that philosopher 
in his strictures upon Locke, and class him 
amongst Sensationalists. Eclecticism assumes 
that no one man, from the very necessary 
order of philosophical development, can lay 
open the foundations of philosophy broad 
enough to bear the superstructure — can lay 
open sufficiently sensation and self-conscious- 
ness as sources of knowledge. It postulates, 
that every philosopher and his age has de- 
veloped either the one or the other of these 
sources of knowledge, but never both. And 
that, in the order of things, a great mind, 
endowed with a universal genius of criticism, 
and possessed of all learning in philosophy, 
must discover a higher method than had thus 
far been pursued — the method of Eclecticism, 
a method assumed to be as far above induc- 
tion and reflective analysis, as the eclectic 
philosopher is above those one-idea philoso- 
phers who, given up to either Sensationalism 
or Idealism, are his necessary forerunners in 
the development of philosophy. But this 
boasted Eclecticism, when searched to the 
bottom, is discovered to be a mere scheme of 
compilation, a universal plagiarism. 



MODERN PERIOD. 105 

As we can know things only in so far as 
we have a faculty of knowing in general, it 
is necessary, in order to a true theory of 
knowledge, that we determine the scope of 
this faculty. This Locke endeavoured to do. 
He maintained that all our knowledge is ob- 
tained through observation. He further main- 
tained that the faculties of observation are 
two: 1. Sense, or external perception ; 2. Self- 
consciousness, or internal perception. The 
fundamental problem, therefore, of Locke's 
philosophy, was to determine the conditions 
of our faculties of knowing. But Locke did 
not see this problem very definitely, if at all. 

All knowledge is divisible into two great 
branches: 1. The objects of knowledge ; 2. The 
mode of hnawing. The objects of knowledge 
Locke properly divided into two great classes, 
external and internal, corresponding to his 
two faculties of sense and reflection or self- 
consciousness. The mode of knowing is also 
divisible into two parts: 1. The possibility of 
hnowing from the nature of thought; 2. The 
possibility of hnowing from the nature of exist- 
ence. This last discrimination Locke had no 
notion of The problem of the conditions of 

9 



106 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

knowledge, therefore, never presented itself 
distinctly to Locke. It is true, that occasion- 
ally he is constrained by the exigencies of 
thought to utter truths which properly fall 
under the problem of the conditions of 
thought. He says, for instance : " He would 
be thought void of common seiise who, asked 
on the one hand or on the other, were to give 
a reason why it is impossible for the same 
thing to be and not to be." Here is a dis- 
tinct recognition of the principle of contra- 
diction, which, of course, has its origin and 
guarantee in the intellect or common ' sense. 
Locke, too, believed in necessary and uni- 
versal truths, as distinguished from contin- 
gent; which, of course, can only find their 
guarantee in the intellect, being in no way 
derivable from or through sensitive cognition. 
And in his criterion of certainty he was ex- 
tremely subjective, maintaining that the sub- 
jective in knowledge is much more certain 
than the objective; thereby erroneously ignor- 
ing the simultaneity of the subjective and 
objective in the fundamental antithesis of 
consciousness, and the consequent equal cer- 
tainty of each. " Our existence (says Locke) 



MODERN PERIOD. 107 

is known to us by a certainty yet higher than 
our senses can give us of the existence of 
things, and that is internal perception, or 
self-consciousness, or intuition, from whence 
may be drawn, by a train of ideas, the surest 
and most incontestible proof of the existence 
of God." This, surely, is not the doctrine of 
a mere Sensationalist. If Locke had been 
called by the polemical necessities of his times 
to consider the conditions oftliouglit as a special 
problem, he would doubtless have evolved 
other principles similar to those we have just 
mentioned; and, while he would have denied 
that they are innate, as articulate proposi- 
tions, he would have admitted that they are 
silent in laws necessitating thought to its 
judgments. For it should be observed that 
Locke's essay was not the mere theory of a 
recluse student, but had a polemical birth in 
the midst of an age in which the discussion 
of great fundamental doctrines were stirring, 
in an extraordinary degree, the practical ac- 
tivities of life. Locke was a mighty cham- 
pion in the universal strife; and his essay 
was written to counteract the subjective ten- 
dency of the Cartesian philosophy. Hence 



108 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the great stress laid on sensation as a source 
of knowledge or ideas, to the comparative 
neglect of the other source, termed by him 
reflection. But it is only a comparative ne- 
glect; for, in the first place, he purges, as we 
have seen, the source of reflection from the 
doctrine of innate ideas, which, in a logical 
point of view, are substantially the idols of 
Bacon. Then, after carefully affirming the 
existence of two sources of ideas, he proceeds, 
in accordance with the demands of philoso- 
phy in that age, to develop the source of 
sensation. Locke's philosophy is, therefore, 
not a one-sided philosophy. Like Bacon, 
Locke was a labourer in the great field of 
practical activity. Not only was he a physi- 
cian skilled in the practice, and well read in 
the theory of medicine, but he was a power- 
ful writer on government and legislation, and 
not only these, but a polemic, strong in theo- 
logical discussion. To estimate, therefore, 
the mental theory of Locke's essay, it is ne- 
cessary to view it through the medium of the 
times, and of the part he took in the strifes 
of thought. But what is chiefly to be praised 
in Locke's writings, is the love of truth which 



MODERN PERIOD. 109 

everywhere prevails. "Whatever I write 
(says he), as soon as I shall discover it not 
to be truth, my hand shall be forwardest to 
throw it into the fire." 

Locke had enounced the doctrine that all 
our knowledge is founded on experience, 
meaning by experience the whole sphere of 
conscious mental activity, thereby embracing 
in it reflection as well as sensation. Hume, 
seizing upon this doctrine, and. narrowing ex- 
perience to sensation, resolved all our uni- 
versal necessary judgments into mere facti- 
tious habits of mind, and subverted the foun- 
dations of theoretical truth, and laid the basis 
of a scheme of absolute skepticism. For, if 
our fundamental primary judgments are not 
necessary, but are mere habits of mind formed 
from the observation of the contingent, coex- 
istent, and antecedent, and consequent phe- 
nomena of external nature, then is human 
opinion but waves of thought moved by the 
accidents of the shifting winds of ever-chang- 
ing phenomena; and what seems true this 
moment may seem false the next. This 
chaos of thought was brought into order and 
certainty by Eeid. He it was who evolved 
9* 



110 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

out of the contents of human consciousness 
those fundamental, necessary, primary beliefs, 
which constitute both the basis and the cri- 
terion of human knowledge. In Locke's time, 
the vice of philosophy was too great subjec- 
tivity. In Eeid's time, it was a total abnega- 
tion of all certain knowledge, but especially 
of those fundamental judgments which alone 
fix certainty in thought — a vice which sprung 
out of the extravagant objectivity to which 
Locke's philosophy had been carried by 
Hume, confining all thought to the elements 
furnished by sensation. If Hobbes and Gas- 
sendi had obtained in Britain as great ascend- 
ency in Locke's time as Hume did in Keid's, 
Locke would perhaps have dwelt as much 
more on reflection as he did on sensation, 
and the philosophy of Reid would have been 
anticipated. But, in the conditions of the 
development of human thought, it was per- 
haps necessary that the development by 
Locke should take place, so that its apparent 
one-sidedness should appear in Hume, and 
thus a necessity be produced for a reexamina- 
tion of human thought to its ultimate basis 
in the primary facts of consciousness. Reid, 



MODERN PERIOD. Ill 

therefore, in fact, took up philosophy where 
Locke left it, and continued the Baconian 
movement, with a fuller development of the 
subjective than there was in Locke, but still 
guided by the fundamental doctrine of Bacon, 
that truth consists in the correspondence or 
agreement between thought and its object; 
and that, in order to secure the truth, observa- 
tion of phenomena is the indispensable con- 
dition. The movement was still towards a 
fuller outward observation of external nature. 
And the Baconian method received a fuller 
theoretical development in the psychological 
doctrine of Eeid, that we perceive external 
objects themselves, as consciousness testifies, 
and not merely representations of them, as 
all previous philosophers had taught. And 
by his doctrine of the simultaneity and con- 
sequent equal certainty of the knowledge of 
the objective and the subjective, Reid over- 
threw the doctrine of Des Cartes, that our 
knowledge of external things must be referred 
by a secondary act of thought to conscious- 
ness for verification. And in this doctrine of 
Reid, for the first time in philosophy, the sub- 
jective and the objective obtained their equi- 



112 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

librium. In his philosophy neither prepon- 
derates over the other. While, therefore, in 
the philosophy of Reid, the subjective is pre- 
vented from being commuted with the objec- 
tive, the certainty of the objective is equalized 
with the subjective. 

But it came to pass, that the doctrines of 
Eeid were misrepresented and perverted by 
Brown, and the Sensationalism of Destutt 
Tracy of France, and kindred doctrines of 
Hume, diluted with rhetoric, were proclaimed 
by him in their stead. Brown made conscious- 
ness convertible with feeling ; and the thought, 
that the whole is greater than its part, is con- 
sidered by him as a feeling. Thus the most 
extravagant Sensationalism again prevailed 
in Britain. And though the proud boast of 
Bacon — that, so potent was his induction as a 
method of investigation, that it would put 
common minds on a level with the most 
powerful — had not been realized, yet it brought 
into the fields of physical science the merest 
empirics in company with true sciencists. 
Thus the downward tendency of physical in- 
quiry needed to be counteracted by a discip- 
line of higher studies. Human reason needed 



MODERN PERIOD. 113 

to be rescued from the dirt of a gross Sensa- 
tionalism. 

While this downward tendency of the ob- 
jective method of Bacon had been realized in 
Britain, the subjective method of Des Cartes 
had been realizing its results on the continent 
of Europe. In the philosophy of Spinosa, it 
tended to Pantheism. In that of Leibnitz, 
from its opposite pole, it made man a mere 
machine, and the physical world his counter- 
part, moving in harmony, not by interdepen- 
dent cog-wheels, but by an unseen spiritual 
agency; which doctrine, when sifted to the 
kernel, is also of Pantheistic tendency. But 
under the influence of the Cartesian method, 
enlarged in its scope to suit the necessities of 
its condition, human reason, at last, in the 
philosophy of Schelling and Hegel, consum- 
mated the grand apotheosis of error, by throw- 
ing aside the many idols of the ancient philo- 
sophy pointed out by Bacon, and substituting 
for them one supreme idol, impiously called 
the Absolute or Infinite. 

But the greatest degradation of philosophy 
remains to be told. The prejudice against 
the Aristotelian logic, which begun in Bacon, 



114 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

was augmented by Locke; so that logic was 
almost ignored in Britain. The marvels ac- 
complished in physics, by cooperation, through 
the method of induction, gave importance to 
men whose moderate abilities would ever ex- 
clude them from the higher study of our in- 
tellectual nature; while the patient attention 
to details, which physical inquiries demand, 
caused an almost exclusive cultivation of the 
powers of observation, to the neglect of the 
higher faculties of the mind. Logic, there- 
fore, as well as metaphysics, sunk to the 
lowest level, in the almost exclusive cultiva- 
tion of physics. 

Jn this state of philosophy. Archbishop 
Whately revived logic, in a work not display- 
ing any great ability, but, at all events, at- 
tracting the attention of thinkers. The work 
did not, however, place logic on that elevation 
which the indications of its history in the 
mediaeval and the succeeding ages would have 
pointed out to any one well read in its litera- 
ture. Nevertheless, it was an omen of the 
beginning of the cultivation of the higher 
faculties of the mind in an age of intellectual 
decadence. But, as low as the level of 



MODERN PERIOD. 115 

Whately's logic was, it was too high for the 
empiric spirit of a Sensational philosophy. 
Mr. John S. Mill, in his Logic, Ratiocinative 
and Inductive, dragged down logic into the 
very mire of empiricism. Taking Brown, 
who, we have seen, makes consciousness con- 
vertible with feeling, as his guide in the philo- 
sophy of the mind, he constructed a system 
of logic in which the higher faculties of the 
mind are ignored. While Whately, with 
some show of reason, resolved induction into 
deduction or syllogism proper. Mill most pre- 
posterously resolved all deduction into induc- 
tion; and thereby consummated the degrada- 
tion of logic. Mr. Mill repudiates entirely all 
necessary truths; consequently ignores the 
formal laws of thought, of which pure logic is 
the science, and reduces all thought to the 
uncertainty of the empirical conditions of ob- 
servation. He ignores all distinction between 
the apodictic and the hypothetical exercise of 
the understanding. He seems never to con- 
sider, that the determinations of the under- 
standing are often effected solely by the rela- 
tion in which intelligence stands to itself in 
thought. He maintains that deduction is but 



116 PROGKESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

an extension of induction, and from the begin- 
ning to the end of his exposition confounds 
inference with dedvxitum. The intrusion of 
matter between the premises and the conclu- 
sion of a syllogism, which is the cardinal error 
to be guarded against in logic, is the very 
thing which Mr. Mill strives to effect as the 
great end and consummation of correct reason- 
ing. The syllogism is founded upon matter 
which it passively receives. It does not even 
develop potential knowledge into actual, but 
merely evolves implicit knowledge into ex- 
plicit. The conclusion is already known be- 
fore the syllogism is formed. Ratiocination 
is determined by the relations into which in- 
telligence puts itself to itself in regard to some 
object-matter. Such being the nature of ratio- 
cination, its very form in the syllogism ex- 
cludes everything intrusive between the pre- 
mises and the conclusion. In a word, Mr. 
Mill does not discriminate pure logic, wherein 
the mental determinations are effected by the 
formal laws of thought, from concrete or modi- 
fied logic, wherein the mental determinations 
are effected under the laws of thought, modi- 
fied by the empirical circumstances under 



MODERN PERIOD. 117 

which we exert our faculties. But even in 
concrete or modified logic, thought is not con- 
sidered as applied to any particular matter, 
but the necessary are considered in conjunc- 
tion with the contingent conditions under 
which thought is actually exerted. Mr. Mill 
does not even discriminate pure from applied 
logic, formal from material illation, but con- 
founds even these. 

It may be said, in answer to these stric- 
tures, that Mr. Mill defines in the beginning 
of his treatise what scope he intends to give 
it, and that the objection we make is one 
merely of the meaning of words. This mode 
of answering our objection, while it has the 
air of looking at the subject from a more com- 
prehensive point of view, is a sheer evasion. 
Mr. Mill has not the right to confuse the 
boundaries of a science. Logic is found by 
reflective analysis as well as by the indica- 
tions of its history to be confined to the formal 
laws of thought as its adequate object-matter; 
else all the material sciences must be intruded 
into it. Mr. Mill, therefore, by taking into 
logic so much foreign matter, is like a geo- 
grapher who should take into the map of 
10 



118 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

America, the continent of Europe. But Mr. 
Mill's is not merely an error of boundary : it 
is a blunder in all the fundamental doctrines 
of logic, leading him to repeat, with emphasis, 
the stale misapprehension, that Bacon's method 
is one-sided, excluding deduction altogether 
as a process of investigation. Playfair, in his 
celebrated Dissertation on the Progress of the 
Mathematical and Physical Sciences, pro- 
nounced the same judgment, and disparaged 
Bacon's method as Mr. Mill does, by saying 
that it ignored the process which in the ad- 
vanced stage of the sciences becomes the most 
important and effective. Whereas, what Mr. 
Mill and his forerunners in the error call de- 
duction, is not deduction, a demonstrative 
process, at all, but is what Bacon means by 
the descending scale of induction, being in 
fact a hypothetical and not an apodictic pro- 
cess, and is sometimes, as we have already 
shown, called the synthetical process of induc- 
tion. The blunder of Mr. Mill is thus a 
double one; first, in supposing the process to 
be deduction when it is not; secondly, in sup- 
posing that Bacon excluded it from his method. 
The truth is. Bacon strode with such colossal 



MODERN PERIOD. 119 

steps along the paths of philosophy, that but 
few have been able to step in his exact foot- 
prints, and of these few Mr. Mill is not one, 
as his numerous misapprehensions of Bacon's 
method show. 

But the most mischievous error which de- 
rationalizes Mr. Mill's logic, is the notion, that 
" Deduction is the great scientific work of the 
present and future ages;" and that "a revolu- 
tion is peaceably and progressively effecting 
itself in philosophy, the reverse of that to 
which Bacon has attached his name." This 
doctrine, assuming as it does, that the highest 
generalities have been reached, evinces a nar- 
rowness of comprehension, which of itself 
would put Mr. Mill below any very high ele- 
vation as a thinker; but when it is also a 
broad contradiction of the fundamental doc- 
trine of his system of logic, which resolves 
deduction into induction, Mr. Mill stands re- 
vealed as a thinker who does not understand 
himself, but crosses his own path in his expo- 
sition of doctrines; and the best refutation is 
to leave him in the entanglement of liis own 
contradictions. 

Induction has been also signally corrupted 



120 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

by Dr. Whewell, in his Philosophy of the In- 
ductive Sciences. The inductive process, ac- 
cording to Dr. Whewell, consists in selecting 
conceptions which exist in the mind anterior 
to all experience, and by these binding to- 
gether the objects of observation, in conformity 
with certain relations subsisting between the 
percepts derived from the objects, and the 
conceptions or ideas of colligation. The ope- 
ration proceeds by trying, first, one concep- 
tion, or idea of colligation, and then another, 
until the right one is found. Now, if the pro- 
cess of induction were that of binding pheno- 
mena together by certain innate ideas or 
conceptions, as Whewell contends, it would 
be just as easy to find the proper idea of 
colligation on seeing a few phenomena, as on 
seeing many. Because it seems sufiiciently 
manifest, that a number of instances outside 
of the mind could in no way enable us any 
more readily to find the idea of colligation 
amidst the multitude of such, which, ex hypo- 
thesis exist in the mind, to bind together the 
given instances, than the given instances 
themselves would. For, in the given instances 
themselves, the fitness of the idea of colliga- 



MODERN PERIOD. 121 

tion must appear; and yet, the inductive in- 
ference or idea of colligation is only suggested 
by many instances. In this truth alone, is 
found a sufficient refutation of Whewell's 
theory of the idea of colligation. 

The tendency of this doctrine of Dr. Whe- 
well's, is to set up in the mind a physical 
standard of things, and thus commute the 
subjective with the objective. The doctrine 
springs out of a misunderstanding of the 
manner in which the mind comes by con- 
cepts, or, as Dr. Whewell improperly calls 
them, conceptions. The mind cannot em- 
brace many objects at once; it must single 
out one, and, when this is done, all others are 
excluded. The product of the mind, when 
attention is thus given to one object only, is 
a percept. But the mind strives to compre- 
hend many objects also. It, therefore, by 
comparing objects, discovers similarities be- 
tween them, and it dwells upon the cha- 
racters which constitute their similarity to 
the exclusion of the characters which consti- 
tute their dissimilarity, and identifies the 
similarities, and expresses the identification 
by a general term. The product of the mind, 
10* 



122 PROGEESS OP PHILOSOPHY. 

in such identification of similarities, is a con- 
cept. NoWj Dr. Whe^vell's ideas of colliga- 
tion are only these concepts empirically 
formed from observation; and the colligation 
of which he speaks is done in the very act 
of conception — is, in fact, the concept itself. 
The concept thus formed may then be used 
in binding together similar objects or phe- 
nomena. His doctrine of ideas of colligation 
is, therefore, a gross absurdity, which vitiates 
his whole philosophy, and, together with 
other similar errors, degrades him to a low 
level as an expounder of logical philosophy. 
In truth. Dr. Whewell is as crude and con- 
fused a thinker as ever aspired with such 
laborious ambition to be a philosopher. 

The philosophy of the Absolute and In- 
finite, has, too, its own pretended method, 
called the ontological method. In this phi- 
losophy, logic, in any proper sense, is done 
away with. Assuming a faculty of intellec- 
tual intuition, by which the absolute and the 
infinite are immediately perceived, it repudi- 
ates altogether as beneath the high purposes 
of philosophy, the grovelling method of in- 
duction. Its method of investigation, if it 



MODERN PERIOD. 123 

can be called so, is not a process of inference 
founded upon evidence, but is an immediate 
intuition, where reasoning becomes only trac- 
ing, intellectually, the order of creation as it 
proceeded by evolution from its primordial 
element of absolute being. This method 
claims to evolve all human knowledge, and 
all that is knowable, out of one fundamental 
entity, in which subject and object, God and 
man. Creator and creature, are identified. 
Its process of evolution is identical with the 
process of creation. As creation is the pro- 
cess of Almighty thought, resulting in all 
that exists, so human thought, in the onto- 
logical method, is the similar process of a 
finite mind, resulting in the knowledge of all 
that exists — ^the same process of the finite 
mind being subordinated to result only in 
knowledge, while that of the infinite results 
in creation.* 

Such is as articulate a statement as we are 
able to give of the method of a philosophy 
which commutes the nescience of man with 
the omniscience of God; and which, when 

* The Hegelians say, the end of philosophy is to re- 
think the great thought of creation. 



124 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

sifted to the bottom, is found to be an an- 
tithesis of the broadest contradictions. 

We have now exhibited the state of phi- 
losophy, that has resulted from both the 
Baconian and Cartesian movements. The 
Scotch philosopher, Sir William Hamilton, 
had begun a reclamation of philosophy. We 
will consider, his labours, in the second part 
of this tract. We designate the time in 
which he flourished, and which is still in pro- 
gress, as a reactionary epoch. Our criticisms 
will, therefore, be both retrospective and pro- 
spective. Topics already passed in review 
will be considered, though in new relations. 



PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 

Though of Lord Bacon it was said, by his 
friend, Dr. Harvey, the discoverer of the cir- 
culation of the blood, "he writes philosophy 
like a Lord Chancellor," it must be admitted, 
Sir William Hamilton writes it like a philoso- 
pher. For he both thinks and writes, more 
like a pure intelligence, than any man in the 
history of speculation. Li the first place, his 
diction is the most concise, the most accurate, 
the most direct, the most compact, and the 
most vigorous ever used by any writer on 
philosophy. FamiUar with all systems of 
philosophy ever proposed, and their criticisms 
expository, supplementary and adverse, and 

125 



126 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

a master of the languages, in which both the 
philosophies and the criticisms have been 
written; he has discovered how much of 
their errors can be ascribed to the deficiencies 
of language, both as an instrument and as a 
vehicle of philosophical thought; and he has, 
accordingly, formed a language for himself, 
adequate to the exigencies of the highest 
thinking, in the new career of philosophy 
which he has inaugurated. And his learn- 
ing, in every department of knowledge sup- 
plementary of philosophy, or auxiliary to it, 
is so abundant, that there seems to be not 
even a random thought of any value, which 
has been dropped along any, even obscure, 
path of mental activity, in any age or coun- 
try, that his diligence has not recovered, his 
sagacity appreciated, and his judgment hus- 
banded in the stores of his knowledge. And, 
in discussing any question of philosophy, his 
ample learning enables him to classify all the 
different theories which have, at successive 
periods, been invented to explain it; and 
generally, indeed we may say always, he dis- 
covers, by the light reciprocally shed from 
the theories, ideas involved in them which 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 127 

their respective advocates had not discrimina- 
ted; thereby giving greater accuracy to the 
theories than they had before. By this mode 
of discussion, we have the history of doctrines 
concentrated into a focus of elucidation. And 
the uses of words, and the mutations in their 
meaning, in different languages, are articu- 
lately set forth; thereby enhancing the accu- 
racy and certainty of our footsteps on the 
slippery paths of speculation. And his own 
genius for original research is such, that no 
subtlety of our intelligent nature, however 
evasive, no relation however indirect or re- 
mote, no manifestation however ambiguous 
or obscure, can escape or elude his critical 
diagnosis. Add to all this; his moral consti- 
tution, both by nature and by education, is 
harmonious with his intellectual, imparting 
to his faculties the energy of a well-directed 
will, and the wisdom of a pure love of truth. 
Therefore it is, that in the writings of Sir 
William Hamilton there is nothing of that 
vacillation in doctrine which results from un- 
balanced faculties. He has built upon the 
same foundation from the beginning. An- 
other notable characteristic is his extraordi- 



128 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

nary individuality. He seems, in no degree, 
under the influence of what is called the doc- 
trine of the historical development of human 
intelligence. He confronts the whole history 
of doctrines, and with a cold critical eye sur- 
veys them as the products of individual minds, 
and not as the evolutions of a total humanity. 
Of eclecticism, there is in his creed, not the 
smallest taint. Truth seems to him the same 
everywhere, unmodified by times. Such is 
the marvellous man, of whose philosophy we 
propose to give some account. 

The history of philosophy seems, to the 
superficial observer, but the recurrence of suc- 
cessive cycles of the same problems, the same 
discussions, and the same opinions. He sees, 
in modern philosophy, only the repetition of 
the dreams of the earliest Greek speculators. 
Philosophy is to him but labour upon an in- 
soluble problem. To the competent critic, 
however, it presents a far different view. He 
sees, in each cycle, new aspects of the pro- 
blems, new relations in the discussions, and 
new modes in the opinions — all indicating an 
advancement, however unequal and halting 
at times, towards the truth. Here then is, at 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 129 

once, evinced the supreme importance of an 
enlightened philosophical criticism. It is the 
preparative and precursor of further progress. 
The different doctrines which, in successive 
ages, have been elicited, are so many experi- 
ments, furnishing, to the enlightened critic, 
indications more or less obvious of the true 
solutions of the problems of philosophy. 

Sir William Hamilton is the prince of critics 
in philosophy. In him philosophical criticism 
has compassed its widest scope, and reached 
its highest attainments. He is the critic of 
all ages, equally at home in all. He has sifted 
all of ancient, all of mediaeval, and all of 
modem thought, with the most delicate sieve 
ever used by any critic; and while he has 
winnowed away the chaff, he has lost not a 
grain of truth. The barriers of different lan- 
guages have not excluded him from a single 
field: he unlocked the gates of one as easily 
as another, and entered where he list. With 
principles of criticism as broad as nature, with 
learning as extensive as the whole of what 
has been written on philosophy, with a know- 
ledge of words, and of the things which they 
denote or are intended to denote, marvellously 
11 



130 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

accurate and coextensive with the whole 
literature of speculation, with a logic both in 
its pure theory and modified applications, ade- 
quate to every need of intelligence, whether 
in detecting the fallacies or expounding the 
truths of doctrine, and with a genius exactly 
suited to use, with the greatest eJBfect, these 
manifold accomplishments, he stands pre-emi- 
nent amongst the critics of philosophy. As 
we have seen how he unravels the network of 
entangled discussions, discriminating the con- 
fusions by purifying the doctrines through a 
more adequate conception and expression of 
them, often correcting the text of the Greek 
writer, which for centuries had baffled the 
grammarians, by the light of the doctrine of 
the author, and in the sequel making the 
truth educed the starting-point for new de- 
velopment of doctrine, we have admired the 
matchless abilities of the critic, until we should 
have been exhausted in being dragged along 
the labyrinths of his mighty ratiocination, had 
we not been refreshed at every turn by the 
new light of truth disclosed by the master 
who was conducting the marvellous enterprise 
of thought. Bentley did not do more to en- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 131 

large the scope, and enrich the learning of 
British literary criticism, when, by his disser- 
tations on the Epistles of Phalaris, he raised 
it from the platitudes of the grammarian and 
the rhetorician to the compass, the life, the 
interest, and the dignity of philological and 
historical disquisition, than Sir William Ha- 
milton has done to give profundity, subtlety, 
comprehensiveness, and erudition to British 
philosophical criticism, by his contributions to 
the Edinhurgh Review. These articles mark 
an era, not only in British but in European 
criticism in every department of philosophy — 
metaphysics, psychology, and logic. They 
were translated into the languages of the con- 
tinent, and their stupendous learning, match- 
less subtlety, and ruthless ratiocination, re- 
ceived everywhere unbounded admiration. 
The very first article, the one on the doctrine 
of the infinito-absolute of Cousin, utterly sub- 
verted the fundamentals of the proud specula- 
tions of Germany, and fully exposed the ab- 
surdity of the attempt of Cousin to conciliate 
them with the humble Scottish philosophy of 
common sense. The continental philosophers 
saw that a critic had arisen, who, by the 



132 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

might and the majesty of his intellect, and 
the vastness of his erudition, gave dignity to 
the humble doctrine which he advocated, and 
they had all along despised. They began to 
feel, 

'' A chiePs amang us takin' notes, 
And faith, he'll prent it." 

But Sir William Hamilton, the critic, is 
only the precursor of Sir William Hamilton 
the philosopher. His criticism is but the pre- 
parative of his philosophy. They, however, 
move on together. The state of the philoso- 
phy of the world made this necessary. The 
calling of Socrates was not more determined 
by the condition of thought in his time, than 
the labours of Sir William Hamilton are by 
the philosophical needs of this age. His eru- 
dition and critical skill are as much needed 
as his matchless genius for original specula- 
tion. Either, without the other, would have 
been comparatively barren of results. And 
his preference, like Aristotle, for logic rather 
than the other branches of philosophy, is the 
very affection that is desiderated in the great 
thinker of this age. It seems to be supposed 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 133 

by somej who even pretend to have studied 
the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton, that 
he has merely rehabilitated the doctrines of 
Reid and Stewart. It might, with much more 
show of truth be said, that Newton only re- 
produced the discoveries of Copernicus and 
Kepler. For the philosophy of Sir William 
Hamilton is a greater stride beyond that of 
his Scottish predecessors, than the discoveries 
and deductions of Newton are beyond those 
of Copernicus and Kepler. Let us then, as 
far as his published writings and our limits 
will permit, show what Sir William has done 
directly to advance philosophy. 

With Bacon began a movement in modern 
philosophy, which parallels that begun by 
Aristotle in ancient.* Aristotle inaugurated 

* When we say that Bacon and Aristotle began these 
respective movements, we do not mean literally, that the 
movements originated with them, but only that, like 
Luther's in the Reformation, their labours were so signal 
and paramount, in these movements, as to be associated 
pre-eminently with them. No great change ever origi- 
nates with the person who becomes the most conspicuous 
in it, in the great spectacle of history. It always has 
antecedents, produced by the agency of inferior persons. 
We, therefore, beg, that everywhere, in this tract, the 
11* 



134 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the deductive process ; Bacon inaugurated the 
inductive. These are the distinctive features 
of those systems of philosophy which they 
advocated; and they are in accordance with 
the spirit of philosophizing in the respective 
periods to which they belonged. Ancient philo- 
sophy was more a deduction from principles; 
modern philosophy is more an inquiry into 
principles themselves. Aristotle and Bacon 
both make logic the paramount branch of 
philosophy ; and the forms of the understand- 
ing the limits of the knowable. Sir William 
Hamilton's philosophy is a preparative and an 
initial towards the conciliation of the systems 
of Aristotle and Bacon. Logic, with him as 
with them, is the paramount branch of philo- 
sophy; and his labours all tend to reconcile 
induction with deduction, and unify in one 
method these two great processes of thought. 
His philosophy is, in fact, a climateric recla- 
mation, vindication, and development of the 
one perennial philosophy of common sense, 

principle of this note may qualify our general remarks, 
even in regard to the claims of originality, which we 
prefer for Sir William Hamilton, unless our remarks 
preclude qualification. 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 135 

which, like the one true faith, is preserved 
amidst all schismatic aberrations, and vindi- 
cated as the only true philosophy. 

It is in the essential unity of human reason 
returning again and again, from temporary 
aberrations in different ages, into the same 
discernments and convictions, that we have 
the means of verifying the true catholic philo- 
sophy. Though there may be nothing in the 
mutual relations of men, at any given time, 
nor in the mutual relations of successive gene- 
rations, that necessarily determines an unin- 
terrupted advance towards truth, yet, not- 
withstanding the occasional wide-spread and 
long protracted prevalence of error, the reason 
of man has hitherto vindicated itself in the 
long run, and proved that, though the newest 
phase of thought may not, at all times, be the 
truest, yet the truest will prevail at last, and 
come out at the goal of human destiny, tri- 
umphant over all errors. This is the drift of 
the history of human opinion as interpreted 
by enlightened criticism. Sometimes skepti- 
cism, recognizing no criterion of truth ; some- 
times idealism, knowing nothing but images 
in ceaseless change; sometimes pantheism, 



136 PKOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

dissolving all individuality, both material and 
spiritual, in the tides of universal being; 
sometimes materialism, believing nothing be- 
yond material nature, and that man is only a 
more perfect species of mammalia, and human 
affairs but the highest branch of natural his- 
tory; and other forms of error, each with its 
peculiar momenta and criteria of knowledge, 
have in reiterated succession, in different ages 
of the world, prevailed as systems of philoso- 
phy ; yet the reason of man has, nevertheless, 
under the guidance of some master mind, re- 
turned to the one perennial philosophy of 
common sense, and reposed in the natural 
conviction of mankind, that an external world 
exists as the senses testify, and that there is 
in man an element which lifts him above the 
kingdom of nature, and allies him in respon- 
sible personal individuality with a divine, 
eternal, and personal God. 

The great ofl&ce of the critic of philosophy, 
at this day, is to trace the footsteps of this 
perennial philosophy through the history of 
human opinion in all its manifold mutations, 
perversions, and aberrations ; and to note its 
features, observe the paths it walks in, and 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 137 

its method and criteria of truth. This Sir 
William Hamilton has done. He has shown 
that the doctrine of common sense, as the 
basis of all philosophy, has prevailed for more 
than two thousand years. He has adduced 
one hundred and six witnesses, Greek, Eoman, 
Arabian, Italian, Spanish, French, British, 
German, and Belgian, to its truth. Amongst 
the many Greek witnesses, Aristotle is found; 
amongst the Roman, Cicero; amongst the 
Italians, Aquinas; amongst the French, all 
the great philosophers from Des Cartes to 
Cousin, both inclusive; amongst the Germans, 
Leibnitz, Kant, Jacobi, and even Fichte, with 
a host of others ; thus showing, that what is 
sometimes thought, even by those from whom 
we might expect better things, to be the super- 
ficial foundation of British philosophy, is in 
truth the only foundation on which the reason 
of man can repose. Philosophers, amidst all 
their efforts to break away from the common 
beliefs of mankind, have at last been com- 
pelled to come back to them as the only ulti- 
mate criterion of truth. "Fichte (says Sir 
W. Hamilton) is a more remarkable, because 
a more reluctant confessor to the paramount 



138 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

authority of belief than even Kant. Depart- 
ing from the principle common to him, and 
philosophers in general, that the mind cannot 
transcend itself, Fichte developed, with the 
most admirable rigour of demonstration, a 
scheme of idealism the purest, simplest, and 
most consistent which the history of philoso- 
phy exhibits. And so confident was Fichte 
in the necessity of his proofs, that on one oc- 
casion he was provoked to imprecate eternal 
damnation on his head, should he ever swerve 
from any, even the least of the doctrines 
which he had so victoriously established. But 
even Fichte, in the end, confesses that natural 
belief is paramount to every logical proof, and 
that his own idealism he could not believe." 

With the great fact before us, so trium- 
phantly reclaimed and vindicated by Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton, that philosophers have never 
been able to find any other criterion of truth 
than the common sense of mankind, we will 
now proceed to show what is its doctrine. 

The philosophy of common sense is the 
doctrine, in its development and applications, 
that our primary beliefs are the ultimate cri- 
terion of truth. It postulates, that conse- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 139 

quents cannot, by an infinite regress, be 
evolved out of antecedents : but that demon- 
stration must ultimately rest upon proposi- 
tions which, in the view of certain primary 
beliefs of the mind, necessitate their own ad- 
mission. These primary beliefs, as primary, 
must of course be inexplicable, being the high- 
est light in the temple of mind, and borrow- 
ing no radiance from any higher cognition by 
which their own light can be illuminated. 
Behind these primary beliefs the mind cannot 
see — all is negation ; because, while these pri- 
mary beliefs are the first energy of the mind, 
they are also its limitation. The primary 
facts of intelligence would not be original, 
were they revealed to us under any other 
form than that of necessary belief. 

As elements of our mental constitution, as 
essential conditions of intelligence itself, these 
primary beliefs must^ at least in the first in- 
stance, be accepted as true. Else, we assume 
that the very root of our intelligence is a lie. 
All must admit some original bases of know- 
ledge in the mind itself, and must assume that 
they are true. 

The argument from common sense is there- 



140 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

fore simply to show, that to deny a given 
proposition would involve a denial of a pri- 
mary belief, an original datum of conscious- 
ness ; and as the primary belief or original 
datum of consciousness must be received as 
veracious, the proposition necessitated by it 
must be received as true also. 

It is manifest, that in arguing on the basis 
of our primary beliefs, they cannot be shown 
to be mendacious, unless it be demonstrated 
that they contradict each other, either imme- 
diately in themselves or mediately in their 
consequences. Because, there being no higher 
criterion by which to test their veracity, it 
can only be tested by agreement or contradic- 
tion between themselves. 

We will now apply this doctrine, and in 
discussing the application, we will explicate 
the doctrine more fully. In the act of sensi- 
ble perception we are, equally and at the 
same time, and in the same indivisible act of 
consciousness, cognizant of ourself as a per- 
ceiving subject, and of an external reality as 
the object perceived, which are apprehended 
as a synthesis inseparable in the cognition, 
but contrasted to each other in the concept as 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 141 

two distinct existences. All this is incontes- 
tibly the deliverance of consciousness in the 
act of sensible perception. This all philoso- 
phers, without exception, admit as a fcLct. 
But then all, until Reid, deny the trutli of the 
deliverance. They maintain that we only 
perceive representations within ourselves, and 
by a perpetual illusion we mistake these re- 
presentations for the external realities. And 
Reid did not fully extricate himself from the 
trammels of this opinion. For while he re- 
pudiated the notion, that we perceive repre- 
sentations distinct from the mind though 
within the mind, he fell into the error, that 
we are only conscious of certain changes in 
ourselves which suggest the external reality. 
But Sir William Hamilton has, by the most 
masterly subtlety of analysis, incontestibly 
shown, that we are directly conscious of the 
external objects themselves, according to the 
belief universal in the common sense of man- 
kind. 

It is manifest, that the whole question re- 
solves itself into one of the veracity of con- 
sciousness. All admit that consciousness does 
testify to the fojct that we perceive the exter- 
12 



142 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

nal reality. To doubt this is to doubt the 
actuality of the fact of consciousness, and 
consequently to doubt the doubt itself, which 
is a contradiction, and subverts itself. The 
data then of consciousness, simply as facts^ or 
actual manifestations and deliverances, cannot 
be denied without involving a contradiction; 
and therefore, the principle of contradiction, 
which we have shown is the only one to be 
applied to the solution of the question, recoils 
upon the skeptic himself, and makes doubt 
impossible. But then, the facts or deliver- 
ances of consciousness considered as testimonies 
to the truth of facts hey mid their own johenomi- 
nal reality, are not altogether to be excluded 
from the domain of legitimate philosophical 
discussion. For this proposition by no means, 
like the other, involves a self-contradiction; 
and thereby repels even the possibility of 
doubt. Therefore philosophers, while they 
admit the fact of the testimony of conscious- 
ness, deny its truth. The dispute is not as to 
what is said, but as to the truth of what is 
said. 

As, then, it has been admitted that the fojct 
is an affirmation of our intelligent nature, its 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 143 

mendacity cannot be consistently assumed; 
for upon the principle of falsus in uno^ falsus 
in omnihvjS, it would impeach the fact itself as 
an affirmation of nature, which we have 
shown involves a contradiction, and is there- 
fore impossible. It is clear, then, that the 
burden of proof, in impeaching the absolute 
veracity of consciousness, lies upon those de- 
nying it. And as we have shown that the 
attempt to prove its mendacity has in all ages 
failed, and that all the most schismatic and 
skeptical have at last found repose for the 
struggling intellect only in the testimony of 
our primary beliefs, we are compelled by ana- 
lysis, and by history, to acknowledge the doc- 
trine of common sense the one cathohc and 
perennial philosophy. 

Here the question obtrudes itself into our 
view. What is the logical significance of our 
primary heliefs? and it is a question of para- 
mount importance. Perhaps, in the answer 
to this question, we may differ from Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton ; and therefore it is that we 
wish to signalize it. 

It is implied in the doctrine of primary be- 
liefs, that, at the root of every primordial act 



144 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of the mind, there is a principle or law guar- 
anteeing the procedure. For example, the 
initial act, from which induction starts, is 
guaranteed by such a principle or law of in- 
telligence — the principle of pJiilosapJiical pre- 
smnytian. Now, in order to distinguish these 
principles or laws from the universal truths 
which are generalized from individual truths 
of fact, they are called universal truths of 
intelligence. Now, we prefer to call these 
principles laws of intelligence, as more expres- 
sive of their real character, rather than truths 
of intelligence ; because, in the operations of 
the mind, they are regulative and not cogita- 
ble, being in fact the poles on which thought 
turns. They are, in our thinking, silent in 
laws, rather than articulate in propositions. 

We think that this is a discrimination that 
ought not to be slighted ; and we venture to 
find fault that Sir William Hamilton uses the 
expressions, "fundamental facts," "beliefs," 
^^ primary propositions," "cognitions at first 
hand," as denoting the same primary data of 
consciousness, only from different points of 
view. We are not convinced of the propriety 
of his opinion implied in such various desig- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 145 

nations ; and are constrained to believe that 
the confusing the distinction, which we have 
endeavoured to indicate, is the initial, the root 
of that cardinal heresy in philosophy which 
makes all cognition encentric — makes thought 
start out from a general notion native to the 
mind. We repudiate the doctrine that there 
ever is a belief or a cognition of the mind 
without its corresponding object. The deli- 
verance of the primary and most incompre- 
hensible belief is. That its object is. Thought 
never evades the fundamental antithesis of 
subject and object, which is the primary law 
of consciousness itself. In no instance is a 
notion, not even that of cause, time, or space, 
native to the mind, acquired from no ade- 
quate object, but purely subjective and regu- 
lative, imposing upon objective thought an 
illusive interpolation of itself. 

We therefore, repeat, that our primary 
beliefs are not within consciousness as com- 
prehended thought, but in consciousness as 
bases of thought. We cannot therefore as- 
sent, that, in different points of view, they 
may or may not be regarded as cognitions or 
propositions. We think they have not the 
12* 



146 PKOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

equivocal character, which the amhiguous 
and various designations applied to them, by 
Sir William Hamilton, seem to us to indicate. 
They are but modes of one unifying con- 
sciousness, not rising, in degree of intellec- 
tion, to cognitions. 

But to call them, "primary propositions," 
is what we chiefly object to. There are pri- 
mary propositions, undoubtedly, which in 
the view of our primary beliefs, necessitate 
their own admission: but then, they are not 
to be confounded with the primary beliefs 
themselves. They are made up of a plu- 
rality of primary beliefs unified in a common 
conviction in consciousness, and articulated 
in language. The point of our objection is, 
to every form and semblance of the doctrine, 
that all hnowing is through previous hiowledge, 
(which will be considered in the sequel), in- 
stead of merely through the power of hnxywihg. 

But to return from this digression: And 
while Sir William Hamilton thus points out 
the bases and the elements of truth, he ex- 
hibits the canons by which philosophical re- 
search is to be conducted. As Bacon, in the 
first book of the Novum Organum, exposed 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 147 

the sources of error in physical inquiry, and 
laid down precautionary rules for conducting 
future investigation, so Sir William Hamilton 
has enounced maxims for conducting the 
loftier and far more difficult research into our 
intellectual nature. And his philosophy is, 
in this particular, the consummation of that 
of Bacon. It explores the depths of con- 
sciousness, and educes those primary beliefs 
and fundamental laws of intelHgence which 
Bacon merely assumed in his philosophy. 
Sir William Hamilton has lighted his torch 
at the lamps of both induction and deduc- 
tion, and it burns with their combined light ; 
and therefore it is, that he has been able to 
penetrate depths in the abysses of thought, 
which to Bacon and Aristotle were unfathom- 
able darkness. How, in the spirit of Bacon, 
is the following admonition ! " No philoso- 
pher has ever formally denied the truth, or 
disclaimed the authority of consciousness; 
but few or none have been content implicitly 
to accept, and consistently to follow out its 
dictates. Instead of humbly resorting to 
consciousness to draw from thence his doc- 
trines and their proof, each dogmatic specula- 



148 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tor looked only into consciousness, there to 
discover his pre adopted opinions. In philoso- 
phy men have abused the code of natural, as 
in theology, the code of positive revelation; 
and the epigraph of a great Protestant divine 
on the book of Scripture is certainly not less 
applicable to the book of consciousness : 

Hie liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque ; 
Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua." 

And Hamilton, like Bacon, is not at all dis- 
mayed by the past failures in philosophy ; but 
with the proud hopes of a great mind, con- 
scious of the power of truth, he anticipates 
mighty triumphs in future for that philoso- 
phy which he has shown to have prevailed 
for more than two thousand years. "And 
yet, (says he) although the past history of 
philosophy has, in a great measure, been only 
a history of variation and error; yet the cause 
of the variation being known, we obtain a 
valid ground of hope for the destiny of phi- 
losophy in future. Because, since philosophy 
has hitherto been inconsistent with itself, 
only in being inconsistent with the dictates 
of our natural beliefs — 

'For Truth is catholic and Nature one;' — 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 149 

it follows, that philosophy has simply to re- 
turn to natural consciousness, to return to 
unity and truth. 

"In doing this, we have only to attend to 
three maxims or precautions : 

"1. That we admit nothing, not either an 
original datum of consciousness, or the legiti- 
mate consequence of such datum; 

"2. That we embrace all the original data 
of consciousness, and all their legitimate con- 
sequences; and 

" 3. That we exhibit each of these in its 
individual integrity, neither disturbed nor 
mutilated, and in its relative place, whether 
of pre-eminence or subordination." 

But Sir William does not stop his direc- 
tions for investigation with these maxims. 
He gives marks, by which we can distinguish 
our original from our derivative convictions 
— by which we can determine what is, and 
what is not, a primary datum of conscious- 
ness. These marks or characters are four; — 
1st, tlieir incomprehensibility — 2d, their sim- 
jplicity — 3d, their necessity and absolute uni- 
versality — 4th, their comparative evidence and 
certainty. These characters are explicated 



150 PBOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

by hinij and rendered entirely capable of ap- 
plication to the purpose of analyzing thought 
into its elements. 

But^ besides these positive directions for 
ascertaing truth, Sir William Hamilton ex- 
poses the very roots of the false systems of 
philosophy which have prevailed in different 
times. As he shows, by the most searching 
analysis, that the philosophy of common 
sense has its root in the recognition of the 
absolute veracity of consciousness in sensible 
perception; so he shows, that all philosophi- 
cal aberrations, or false systems of philoso- 
phy, have their respective roots either in a 
full or partial denial of its veracity. And 
he does not deal merely in generalities; but 
he articulately sets forth five great variations 
from truth and nature, which have prevailed 
as systems of philosophy, and shows the 
exact degree of rejection of the veracity of 
consciousness which constitutes the root of 
each. We are thereby enabled to see the 
roots of these great heresies laid bare, and 
can extirpate them, by the argument from 
common sense. 

Such are the rules which Sir William 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 151 

Hamilton lays down for conducting inquiry 
in the province of mind. They are a de- 
velopment of the method of Bacon in its ap- 
plication to psychology, the highest branch 
of phenomenal philosophy. 

We now approach a new development of 
the philosophy of common sense, called the 
philosophy of the conditioned. It constitutes 
the distinguishing feature of the philosophi- 
cal system of Sir William Hamilton; and 
was developed by him to satisfy the needs of 
intelligence in combating the proud and vain- 
glorious philosophy of Germany. It is a re- 
markable monument of the largeness, the pro- 
fundity, and the penetrating acuteness of his 
intellect. 

The philosophy of common sense assumes, 
that consciousness is the supreme faculty — 
in fact, that it is the complement of all the 
faculties — that what are called faculties are 
but acts of consciousness running into each 
other, and are not separated by those lines of 
demarcation which are imposed upon them 
by language for the needs of thinking about 
our intelligent nature. The supremacy of 



152 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

consciousness was the doctrine of Aristotle, 
of Des Cartes, and of Locke. Reid and 
Stewart reduced consciousness, in their sys- 
tem, to a special faculty only co-ordinate with 
the others. This heresy Sir William Hamil- 
ton, amongst his innumerable rectifications 
and developments of Reid's philosophy, has 
exposed, and by a singular felicity of analysis 
and explication, has restored consciousness to 
its rightful sovereignty over the empire of 
intelligence. 

Having postulated that consciousness is 
the highest, and fundamental faculty of the 
human mind, it becomes necessary, in order 
to determine the nature of human knowledge, 
to determine the nature of consciousness. 

Now, consciousness is only possible under 
the antithesis of the thinking mental self, 
and an object thought about, in correlation 
and limiting each other. It is, therefore, 
manifest, that knowledge, in its most funda- 
mental and thoroughgoing analysis, is dis- 
criminated into two elements in contrast of 
each other. These elements are appropriately 
designated, the subject and the object, the first 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 153 

applying to the conscious mind knowing, and 
the last, to that which is known. And all 
that pertains to the first is called subjective, 
and all that pertains to the last is called oh- 
jective. 

Philosophy is the science of knowledge. 
Therefore, philosophy must especially regard 
the grand and fundamental discrimination of 
the two primary elements of the subjective and 
objective, in any theory of knowledge it may 
propound. 

Now, the first and fundamental problem, 
which presents itself in the science of know- 
ledge is, What can we hnow ? Upon the prin- 
ciples of the philosophy of common sense, the 
solution of the problem is found, by showing 
what are the conditions of our knowledge. 
These conditions, according to the thorough- 
going fundamental analysis of our knowledge 
just evinced, arise out of the nature of both 
of the two elements of our knowledge, the 
subjective and the objective. 

Aristotle, who did so much towards ana^ 
lyzing human thought into its elements, strove 
also to classify all objects real under their 
13 



154 PKOGKESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ultimate identifications or categories in rela- 
tion to thought. In modern times, Kant 
endeavoured to analyze intelligence into its 
ultimate elements in relation to its objects, 
and to show in these elements the basis of all 
thinking, and the guarantee of all certainty. 
Aristotle's categories, though extremely incom- 
plete, and indeed, we may say bungling, as 
they confound derivative with simple notions, 
did something for correct thinking in pointing 
outj with more exactness, the relations of 
objects real to thought. But Kant, making a 
false division of intelligence itself into reason 
and understanding, blundered at the threshold, 
and while he analyzed reason into its supposed 
peculiar elements, to which he gave the Pla- 
tonic name of Ideas, he analyzed understand- 
ing into its supposed peculiar elements, and 
gave them the Aristotelic name of Categories. 
Kant's analysis of our intelligence into its 
pure forms, made the human mind a fabric of 
mere delusion. The ideas of reason he pro- 
posed as purely subjective and regulative, and 
yet delusively positing themselves objectively 
in thought. And so too, in like manner, are 
his categories of understanding expounded as 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 155 

deceptive. His philosophy is thus rendered, 
at bottom, a system of absolute skepticism. 

It is seen, from this account of them, that 
Aristotle's Categories or Predicaments, are 
exclusively objective, of things understood; 
and that those of Kant are exclusively sub- 
jective, of the mind understanding. Each is 
therefore one-sided. 

Sir William Hamilton, discriminating more 
accurately than his predecessors, the dual na- 
ture of thought, has distinguished its two 
fundamental elements, the subjective and the 
objective, by a thoroughgoing analysis, and at 
the same time has observed that these ele- 
ments are ever held together in a synthesis 
which constitutes thought in its totality. He 
has therefore endeavoured to accomplish, in 
one analysis of thought, what Aristotle and 
Kant failed to do by their several but partial 
analyses. As thought is constituted of both 
a subjective and an objective element, the 
conditions of the thinkable or of thinking 
must be the conditions of both knowledge and 
existence — of the possibility of knowing, both 
from the nature of thought, and from the 
nature of existence; and must therefore em- 



156 PKOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

brace intelligence in relation to its objects, 
and objects in relation to intelligence, and 
thus supersede the one-sided predicaments of 
Aristotle and Kant. 

The first step towards discriminating the 
fundamental conditions of thought, is to re- 
duce thought itself to its ultimate simplicity. 
This Sir William Hamilton has done, by 
showing that it must be either positive or 
negative, when viewed subjectively, and either 
conditioned or unconditioned when viewed 
objectively. And he has discriminated, and 
signalized the peculiar nature of negative 
thought, by showing that it is conversant 
about the unconditioned, while positive thought 
is conversant about the conditioned. This is 
a salient point in Sir William's philosophy. 
He shows that the Kantean Ideas of pure 
reason, are nothing but negations or impo- 
tences of the mind, and are swallowed up in 
the unconditioned; and that the Kantean 
Categories of the understanding are but sub- 
ordinate forms of the conditioned. And while 
he thus reduces the Predicaments of Kant to 
ultimate elements, he annihilates his division 
of our intelligence into reason and under- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 157 

standing. He shows that what Kant calls 
the reason is in fact an impotence, and what 
he calls the understanding is the whole in- 
tellect. 

It had been shown by Aristotle, that nega- 
tion involves affirmation — that non-existence 
can only be predicated by referring to exist- 
ence. This discrimination has become a fruit- 
ful principle in the philosophy of Sir William 
Hamilton. He, therefore, begins the an- 
nouncement of the conditions of the think- 
able, by showing the nature of negative 
thought. He shows that negative thought is 
realized only under the condition of relativity 
and positive thinking. For example : we try 
to think — to predicate existence, and find 
ourselves unable. We then predicate incogi- 
tability. This incogitability is what is meant 
by negation or negative thought. 

If then negative thinking be the opposite 
of positive thinking, it must be the violation 
of one or more of the conditions of positive 
thinking. The conditions of positive thinking 
are twoj 1st. The condition of non-contradiG- 
tion : 2d. The condition of relativity. To think 
at all, (that is positively, for positive thinking 
13* 



158 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

is properly the only thinking,) our thinking 
must not involve a contradictioUj and it must 
involve relativity. If it involve contradic- 
tion, the impossible both in thought and in 
reality results. If the condition of relativity 
be not purified, the impossible in thought 
only results. 

Now the condition of non-contradiction is 
brought to bear in thinking under three 
phases constituting three laws: — 1st. The law 
of identity; 2d. The law of contradictimi ; 3d. 
The law of excluded middle. The science of 
these laws is Logic. Thus, is shown the ulti- 
mate condition of the thinkable on which de- 
pends the science of explicative or analytical 
reasoning. This we shall show fully in the 
sequel, when we come to treat of what Sir 
William Hamilton has done for Logic. 

The condition of non-contradiction is in no 
danger of being violated in thinking; there- 
fore its explication is only of theoretical im- 
portance. 

The condition of relativity is the important 
one in thought. This condition, in so far as 
it is necessary^ is brought to bear under two 
principal relations; one of which arises from 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 159 

the subjective element of thought, the mind 
thinking, (called the Relation of Knowledge ;) 
the other arises from the objective element of 
thought, the thing thought about, (called the 
Relation of Existence.) 

The relation of Knowledge arises from the 
reciprocal relation of the subject and the ob- 
ject of thought. Whatever comes into con- 
sciousness is thought, by us, as belonging to 
the mental self exclusively, or as belonging to 
the not-self exclusively, or as belonging partly 
to both. 

The relation of Existence arising from the 
object of thought is two-fold: this relation 
being sometimes intrinsic, and sometimes ex- 
trinsic ; according as it is determined by the 
qualitative or quantitative character of exist- 
ence. Existence conceived as substance and 
quality, presents the intrinsic relation, called 
qualitative; substance and quality are only 
thought as mutual relatives inseparable in con- 
ception. We cannot think either separate 
from the other. 

All that has thus far been said applies to 
both mind and matter. 

The extrinsic relation of Existence is three- 



160 PEOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

fold; and as constituted by three species of 
quantity, it may be called quantitative. It is 
realized in or by the three quantities, time, 
space, and degree, called respectively, pro- 
tensive, extensive and intensive quantity. 
The notions of time and space are the neces- 
sary conditions of all positive thought. Posi- 
tive thought cannot be realized except in time 
and space. Degree is not, like time and space, 
an absolute condition of thought. Existence 
is not necessarily thought under degree. It 
applies only to quality and not to quantity; 
and only to quality, in a restricted sense 
which Sir William Hamilton has explicated 
in his doctrine of the qualities of bodies, di- 
viding them into primary, secundo-primary, 
and secondary. 

Of these conditions and their relations in 
their proper subordinations and co-ordinations 
Sir William has presented a table, which he 
calls the Alphabet of Thought. 

Out of the condition of relativity springs 
the science of metaphysics, just as we have 
indicated that logic springs out of the condi- 
tion of non-contradiction. Thus the respec- 
tive roots of the two great cognate branches 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 161 

of philosophy are traced to their psychological 
bases in the alphabet of thought. 

We will now exhibit the metaphysical doc- 
trine, which Sir William Hamilton educes 
from the analysis of thought which we have 
endeavoured to present. And here he elevates 
the philosophy of common sense into the philo- 
so23hy of the conditioned, borrowing this ap- 
pellation from the different point of view from 
which philosophy is considered. The former 
appellation is derived from a psychological 
point of view, the latter from a metaphysical — 
the former from a subjective, the latter from 
an objective. 

It is sufficiently apparent that the condi- 
tion of relativity limits our knowledge. This 
is the fundamental fact which it is proposed 
to establish. It is proposed to show that of 
the absolute we have no knowledge, but only 
of the relative. This is the whole scope of 
the philosophy of the conditioned. 

With a view of showing the argument 
from the philosophy of the conditioned, let 
us turn, for a moment, to the philosophy of 
the absolute, the unconditioned, which is the 
reverse doctrine, and for the refutation of 



162 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

which the conditions of the thinkable are 
adduced as a basis. 

From the dawn of philosophy in the school 
of Elea, the absolute, the infinite, the uncon- 
ditioned has been the highest principle of 
speculation. The great master amongst an- 
cient philosophers, Aristotle, in accordance 
with the general drift of his philosophy, 
denied that the Infinite is even an object 
of thought, much less of knowledge. And 
that profound, and subtle, but perverse and 
paradoxical genius, Kant, who, towards the 
close of the eighteenth century, made the first 
serious attempt ever made, to investigate the 
nature and origin of the notion of the Infi- 
nite, maintained that the notion is merely 
regulative of our thoughts; and declared the 
Infinite to be utterly beyond the sphere of 
our knowledge. But out of the philosophy 
of Kant, from a hidden germ, grew a more 
extravagant theory of the absolute than any 
which had before perplexed and astounded 
the practical reason of man. It was main- 
tained by Fichte and Schelling — who fell 
back on the ancient notion, that experience, 
because conversant only about the phenome- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 163 

nal and transitory, is unworthy of the name 
of philosophy as incapable of being a valid 
basis of certainty and knowledge — that man 
has a faculty of iyitellectual intuition which 
rises above the sphere of consciousness, as 
well as of sense, and enthroning the reason 
of man on the seat of Omniscience, with 
which it in fact becomes identified, surveys 
existence in its all-comprehensive unity and 
its all-pervading relations, and unveils to us 
the nature of God, and, by an ontological 
evolution, explains the derivation of all 
things, from the greatest to the very least. 

This philosophy captivated the brilliant 
and sympathetic genius of M. Cousin, of 
France, who strove to conciliate and harmo- 
nize it with the Scottish philosophy of expe- 
rience as promulgated by Reid, with which 
M. Cousin had been imbued. He denied the 
intellectual intuition of the German philoso- 
phers, and claimed that the Infinite is given 
as a datum in consciousness along with its 
correlative the Finite ; that these two notions, 
being necessarily thought as mutual relatives, 
must therefore be both equally objectively 
true. These two notions and their relations 



164 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to each other are, at once, the elements and 
the laws of the reason of both man and God, 
and that all this is realized in and through 
consciousness. This theory M. Cousin pro- 
claimed as a powerful eclecticism, which con- 
ciliated not only what had been before con- 
sidered counter and hostile in the reflections 
of individual philosophers, but also, in the 
different systems of philosophy preserved in 
the history of the science. Thus, the history 
of philosophy, with its various systems, was 
shown to be but the growth of one regularly 
developed philosophy, gradually culminating 
towards that one consummate knowledge com- 
pleted in the all-comprehending eclecticism 
inaugurated, in the central nation of Europe, 
by M. Cousin in a splendour of discourse 
worthy of the grand doctrine which makes 
the proud rationalism of Germany acknow- 
ledge its doctrinal affiliation with the humble 
Scottish philosophy of observation. When 
this doctrine reached Scotland, Sir William 
Hamilton, at once, entered the great Olympic 
of philosophical discussion, and stood forth, 
as the champion of the humble doctrine of 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 165 

common sense, against the host of continental 
thinkers. 

And now, for the first time in the history 
of philosophy, the doctrine of the Absolute, 
the Infinite, the Unconditioned, was made 
definite. It was shown, by Sir William 
Hamilton, that so far from the Absolute and 
the Infinite meaning the same thing or no- 
tion, they were contradictory opposites; the 
Absolute meaning the unconditional affirma- 
tion of limitation, while the Infinite means 
the unconditional negation of limitation — the 
one thus an affirmative, the other a negative. 
And he further showed, that both were but 
species of the unconditioned. The question 
being thus purified from the inaccuracy of 
language and the confusion of thought; and 
it being shown that the unconditioned must 
present itself to the human mind in a plural 
form; it was seen that the inquiry resolves 
itself into the problem, whether the uncon- 
ditioned, as either the Absolute or the Infinite 
can be realized to the mind of man. Sir 
William Hamilton shows that it cannot. He 
demonstrates that in order to think either 
alternative, we must think away from those 
14 



166 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

conditions of thought under which thought 
can alone be realized; and that, therefore, 
any attempt to think either the Absolute or 
the Infinite must end in a mere negation of 
thought. These notions are thus shown to 
l)e the results of two counter imbecilities of 
the mind — the inability to realize the uncon- 
ditionally limited, and the unconditionally 
unlimited. The doctrine of M. Cousin is 
shown to be assumptions, inconsequent, and 
self-contradictory. His Infinite is shown to 
be, at best, only an Indefinite, and therefore 
a relative. And it is shown, by a compre- 
hensive application of the AristoteHc doctrine, 
that the knowledge of opposites is one, that 
so far from the fact, of the notions of the In- 
finite and Finite mutually suggesting each 
other, furnishing evidence of the objective 
reality of both, it should create a suspicion 
of the reverse. The truth is, the searching 
analysis, to which the doctrine of M. Cousin 
is subjected, clearly evinces that he did not 
at all apprehend the state of the question 
discussed, and in fact was confusing himself 
in a vicious circle of words. 

And the Intellectual Intuition of Fichte and 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 167 

Schelling is shown to be a mere chimera ; and 
his Absolute, a mere nothing. As Schelling 
could never connect his Absolute with the 
Finite in any doctrinal affiliation, so he was 
unable to discover any cognitive transition 
from the Intellectual Intuition to personal 
consciousness. This hiatus in his theory 
could not, of course, escape the penetrating 
sagacity of Sir William Hamilton. It was at 
once demonstrated as the Intellectual Intui- 
tion is out of and above consciousness, and to 
be reahzed, the philosopher must cease to be 
the conscious man Schelling, that if even the 
Intellectual Intuition were possible, still it 
could only be remembered, and ex hypothesis 
it could not be remembered, for memory is 
only possible under the conditions of the 
understanding which exclude the Absolute 
from knowledge. By this analysis the Abso- 
lute is shown to be a mere mirage in the 
infinite desert of negation, conjured up by 
a self-delusive imagination, conceiting itself 
wise above the possibilities of thought. It 
may also be argued against the Intellectual 
Intuition, that it is only through the organ- 
ism of sense, that the mind realizes form, the 



168 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

image of an object; for consciousness in and 
of itself is not an imaging faculty. Now the 
Intellectual Intuition realizes image in the 
Absolute. It therefore partakes of the cha- 
racter of sensation; and it, in fact, by this 
analysis stands revealed as a sublimated sense 
postulated, by reason overleaping itself, in 
the attempt to clear the circle of the think- 
able. The doctrine of the Absolute is thus 
proved to be a sensational philosophy, dis- 
guised under terms of supposed high spiritual 
import. And thus, it is demonstrated, that 
to abandon consciousness as the highest 
faculty, is to necessitate a fall into sensuism, 
though we imagine, all the while, we are soar- 
ing on the wings of reason, above the region 
of consciousness. Schelling and Condillac 
are thus found in the darkness of a common 
error listening to the same oracle. And this 
analysis is confirmed, by the fact, that Oken, 
who, next to Hegel, was the most distin- 
guished disciple of Schelling, in his Physio- 
Philosophy, makes the Absolute nothing^ zero ; 
and then, by pure reason, evolves, out of it, 
all physics; thus ascribing to a faculty, above 
consciousness, the imaging power of the senses. 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 169 

And Oken thus enthrones the physical sci- 
ences, as he imagines, on a seat above con- 
sciousness, when it is, in fact, the footstool of 
consciousness, the senses, on which they sit 
the while.* 

Thus was trampled down, this proud doc- 
trine which had misled speculation; and phi- 
losophy was again brought back from its 
aberrations into the sober paths of common 
sense. And never before did so mighty a 
champion lead it. For whatever else may 
be thought, in comparing Sir William Hamil- 
ton with other philosophers, it must be ad- 

* It is true that Schelling makes the manner of know- 
ing the absolute presentative, by the fiction of an in- 
tellectual intuition emancipated from the conditions af 
time and space, while Hegel makes this manner of know- 
ing representative, by the fiction of a logical reason 
emancipated from the laws of thought. Yet I am right 
in saying that the intellectual intuition, if possible, must 
possess an imaging power and therefore is sensational ; 
because in knowing the absolute, imagination and con- 
ception must concur, for the absolute must be considered 
individual. It may be said however, that the intellec- 
tual intuition assumes that both conception and imagina- 
tion do not belong to its manner of knowing. This is 
only further evidence that it is a fiction. 
14* 



170 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOt>HY. 

mitted that as a man of hostilities, a dialec- 
tician and a critic, he is altogether matchless. 

Having given an all-comprehensive example 
of the argument from the philosophy of the 
conditioned, we will now proceed to expound, 
in outline, the philosophy of the conditioned. 
The distinguishing feature of this philosophy, 
the one which most articulately enounces its 
character, is the doctrine of a mental Impo- 
tence. This doctrine we will now expound. 

The problem most fruitful of controversy in 
philosophy is that of the distinction between 
experiential and non-experiential notions and 
judgments. Some philosophers contend that 
there is no such distinction; but that all legi- 
timate notions and judgments are experien- 
tial. And those who have admitted the dis- 
tinction have quarrelled about the criterion of 
the distinction. Leibnitz, at last, established 
the quality of necessity, the necessity of so 
thinking, as the criterion of our non-experi- 
ential notions and judgments. Afterwards 
Kant, in his Critic of Pure Reason, developed 
and applied this criterion. And it may now 
be considered as the acknowledged test of our 
unacquired cognitions amongst those who ad- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 171 

mit that there are non-experiential notions 
and judgments. Now, it is in relation to 
this fundamental distinction, that Sir William 
Hamilton has developed the philosophy of the 
conditioned. He admits that we have non- 
experiential notions and judgments, (we pre- 
fer to call the two classes of notions and 
judgments, primary and secondary , as we 
think both classes, from a certain point of 
view, can appropriately be considered as ex- 
periential in a restricted sense,) and he con- 
curs with Leibnitz and Kant, that necessity is 
their distinctive quality. But then, he main- 
tains that the doctrine, as developed by all 
previous philosophers, is one-sided, when it 
should be two-sided. And the side of the 
doctrine, which philosophers have overlooked, 
is the important one. The doctrine, as here- 
tofore enounced and recognized, is that the 
necessity is a positive one, so to think, and is 
determined by a mental power. But Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton considers, and very justly, that 
this is only half of the truth, and the least 
important half; because this necessity is 
never illusive, never constrains to error; while 
the necessity which he indicates is naturally 



172 PROaRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

illusive. His doctrine is, that this necessity 
is both positive and negative : " The one, the 
necessity of so thinking (the impossibility of 
not so thinking,) determined by a mental 
power, the other the necessity of not so think- 
ing (the impossibility of so thinking,) deter- 
mined by a mental impotence." This negative 
necessity, which has been overlooked by phi- 
losophers, plays an important part on the 
theatre of thinking. It is to the development 
of its function in our mental economy, that 
the philosophy of the conditioned is directed. 
As philosophy stood, the very highest law of 
intelligence, which asserts that of two contra- 
dictories, both cannot, but one must, be true, 
led continually to the most pervasive and 
fundamental errors. Because when one alter- 
native was found incogitable, the mind imme- 
diately recoiled to the conclusion that the 
other contradictory must be true. When, for 
example, in examining the doctrine of the 
will, it was discovered that the freedom of the 
will was incomprehensible, could not be spe- 
culatively construed to the mind, the inquirer 
immediately recoiled to the alternative, of the 
necessity of human actions 5 and so on the 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 173 

other hand, when the necessity of the will 
was found incogitable, the inquirer fell back 
upon the alternative of liberty. So that phi- 
losophers, like Milton's fallen angels, had 

" . reason'd Mgh 

Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
Fixt fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute, 
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost." 

Thus the negative necessity, of not so thinh- 
ing, which was not ever even suspected to 
exist, had been a source of constant errors 
utterly incapable of solution. But Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton has discovered, that we may 
be negatively unable to think one contradic- 
tory, and yet find ourselves equally impotent 
to conceive the opposite. To this fundamental 
psychological fact he has applied the highest 
law of intelligence, that of tivo contradictories, 
one must of necessity he true; and that there- 
fore, there is no ground for inferring a fact to 
be impossible, merely from our inability to 
conceive its possibility. And thus is disclosed 
the hidden rock on which speculation, in its 
highest problems, had foundered. 

The philosophy of the conditioned is the 
development and application of this Negative 



174 PROGRESS OP PHILOSOPHY. 

Necessity in combination with the Positive. 
In order to give precision to the doctrine of 
the conditioned, the conditions of the thinka- 
ble are evoked and systematized under the 
two fundamental categories of positive and 
negative thinking. And these categories are 
themselves subdivided in order to bring out 
their import in generic instances of their ap- 
plication in practical thought. These condi- 
tions of the thinkable we have exhibited; 
but it now becomes necessary to recur to them, 
for the needs of the discussion and exposition 
on which we now enter. 

The most important and comprehensive 
question in metaphysics is, The origin and 
nature of the causal judgment. No less than 
seven theories had been propounded on the 
problem ; and now, Sir William Hamilton has 
propounded an eighth, entirely new. He at- 
tempts to resolve the causal judgment into a 
modification of the law of the conditioned, 
which is so obtrusive in his view of philoso- 
phy. He makes the causal judgment a mere 
inability to think an absolute beginning: — 
a mere necessity to deny that the object, 
which we apprehend as beginning to be, 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 175 

really so begins: — an inability to construe 
it in thought, as possible, that the comple- 
ment of existence has been increased or di- 
minished : — a mere necessity to affirm the 
identity of its present sum of being, with the 
sum of its past existence. The supposed 
connection between cause and effect is in 
its last analysis, resolved into a mental im- 
potence, the result of the law of the condi- 
tioned. 

It is manifest, that in this theory, the^fact 
of our inability to conceive the complement 
of existence, either increased or diminished, 
is the turning point in the question. That, 
because we are unable to construe it, in 
thought, that such increase or diminution is 
possible, we are constrained to refund the pre- 
sent sum of existence into the previous sum 
of existence, is given as an explanation of the 
causal judgment. 

Now, it seems to us that this solution avoids 
the important element in the phenomenon to 
be explained. The question in nature, is not 
whether the present complement of existence 
had a previous existence — has just begun to 
be? but, how comes its new appearance? 



176 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

The obtrusive and essential element, is the 
new appearance, the change. This is the fact 
which elicits the causal judgment. To the 
change is necessarily prefixed, by the under- 
standing, a cause or potence. The cause is 
the correlative to the change, elicited in 
thought and posited in nature. The question 
as to the origin of the sum of existence, does 
in no way intrude into consciousness, and is 
not involved in the causal judgment. Such a 
question may, of course, be raised ; and then 
the theory of Sir William Hamilton is a true 
account of what would take place in the mind. 
And this is the question, which, it seems to us. 
Sir William has presented as the problem of 
the causal judgment. His statement of the 
problem is this : " When aware of a neio ap- 
pearance, we are unable to conceive that 
therein has originated any new existence, and 
are therefore constrained to think that what 
now appears to us under a new form, had 
previously an existence under others — others 
conceivable by us or not. We are utterly 
unable to construe it in thought, as possible 
that the complement of existence has been 
increased or diminished." 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 177 

This seems to us, not a proper statement of 
the problem of causation. This problem does 
not require the complement of existence to be 
accounted for; but the new form to be ac- 
counted for; and a new form must not be 
confounded with an entirely neio existence. 
Causation must be discriminated from crea- 
tion ; in the first, change only, in the last, the 
complement of existence, is involved. If we 
attempt to solve the problem of creation, the 
notion of an absolute beginning is involved; 
consequently, a negative impotence is expe- 
rienced, as we cannot think an absolute be- 
ginning, and we would fall back on the notion 
of causation — would stop short at the causal 
judgment, unable to rise to a higher cognition 
— the cognition of creation. 

The causal judgment consists in the neces- 
sity we are under of prefixing in thought a 
cause to every change, of which we think. 
Now change implies previous existence ; else 
it is not change. Of what does it imply the 
previous existence ? Of that which is changed, 
and also of that by which the change is efiect- 
ed. Now change is effect. It is the result of 
an operation. Operation is cause (potence) 
15 



178 PEOaRBSS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

realizing itself in effect. It seems to us, by 
this somewhat tautological analysis, that cause 
and effect necessarily imply each other, both 
in nature and in thought. Causality is thought 
both as a law of things and a law of intelli- 
gence. When we attempt to separate effect 
from cause, in our thought, contradiction 
emerges. It is realized to consciousness in 
every act of will, and in every act of positive 
thinking as both natural and rational. Cause 
and effect are related to each other, as terms 
in thought, as well as realities in existence. 
Causality is primarily natural, secondarily 
rational. The woof of reasoning, into which 
its notion is woven, has the two threads of 
the material and the rational running toge- 
ther, by which existence and thought are 
harmonized into truth; the objective respond- 
ing to the subjective. K this were not the 
law of material thinking, we do not see how 
there could be any consecutive thinking about 
nature. The notion of cause always leads 
thought in material reasoning — always deter- 
mines the mental conclusion, as the notion of 
reason does in formal or pure reasoning. The 
law of cause and effect is, in material thought, 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 179 

what the law of reason and consequent is in 
formal thought. 

It is doubtless true, that the negative impo- 
tence to think an absolute beginning necessa- 
rily connects in thought present with past 
existence; and as all change must take place 
in some existence, the change itself is con- 
nected in thought with something antecedent; 
and, therefore, the mind is necessitated by 
the negative impotence to predicate something 
antecedent to the change. But, then, as a 
mere negative impotence cannot yield an affir- 
mative judgment, it cannot connect present 
with past existence, in the relation of cause 
and effect, but only in sum of existence which 
it is unable to think either increased or dimi- 
nished. The causal judgment is determined 
by a mental power elicited into action by an 
observed change, and justified thereby as an 
affirmation of a potence evinced in the changed 
existence; and it matters not whether the 
change be the result of many concurring 
causes, or of one; still the notion of potence 
cannot but be thought as involved in the 
phenomenon. When we see a tree shivered 
to atoms by a flash of lightning, it is difficult 



180 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to be convinced J that the causal judgment 
elicited by the phenomenon, is merely the 
impotence to think an absolute beginning. 

We are conscious that we are the authors 
of our own actions; and this is, to be con- 
scious of causation in ourselves. But if we 
attempt to analyze this fact in consciousness 
by considering it as made up of two elements 
related in time, we confuse ourselves by the 
impotence to conceive any causal nexus be- 
tween the supposed antecedent and conse- 
quent. The fact is, that they are a simulta- 
neous deliverance of consciousness realizing 
an antithesis in one inseparable act; because 
cause and effect are never realized separately, 
but conjointly. Efficiency is twofold, partly 
cause, partly eifect, and cannot be thought 
otherwise without contradiction. Cause is 
thus thought as an indefinite, as not having 
either an absolute beginning or ending. Ab- 
solute beginning is not more necessary to the 
notion of cause than to that of time. Both 
are thought as quantities, and though both 
are thought as indeterminates, like all inde- 
terminates, are capable of a determinate ap- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 181 

plication. And while realized as particular, 
they are thought as universal. 

We are prone to postulate principles more 
absolutely than they are warranted by nature. 
Therefore it is, that the subtleties of nature 
so often drop through the formulas of the 
logician; and he retains in their stead ab- 
stractions not corresponding with existence. 
Excessive study of formal logic tends to lessen 
the capacity for appreciating the imports of 
intuition. The apodictic character of logical 
relations is so different from that of mere 
material relations, that a mind, long addicted 
to the estimation of the former, cannot but 
contract a fallacious bias somewhat like that 
of the mere analytical mathematician, but of 
course to a much less degree. And on the 
other hand, a metaphysician, who like Locke, 
is deficient in a knowledge of logic, and un- 
practised in its precise distinctions and forms, 
becomes loose, inconsequent, and contradictious 
in his opinions. We venture to suggest, that 
the former of these biases is apparent in the 
application of the law of the conditioned to 
the causal judgment, by Sir William Hamilton. 
He postulates it too unqualifiedly. 
15* 



182 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

The doctrine of the conditioned rescues 
thought from otherwise insoluble contradic- 
tions, by carrying up the contradictory phe- 
nomena into a common principle of limitation 
of our faculties. For example : If we attempt 
to think an absolute beginning, we find it im- 
possible; and on the other hand, if w^e at- 
tempt to think its contradictory opposite, an 
infinite non-beginning, we find it equally in- 
cogitable. If therefore, both be received as 
positive affirmative deliverances of our intelli- 
gence, then our minds testify, by necessity, to 
lies. But the philosophy of the conditioned 
emphatically forbids us to confound, as equiva- 
lent, non-existence with incogitability ; be- 
cause it does not make the human mind the 
measure of existence, but just the reverse. 
It postulates as its fundamental principle, that 
the incogitable may and must be necessarily 
true upon the acknowledged highest principle 
of intelligence, that of two contradictories one 
must, but both cannot be true. Thus by 
carrying up these contradictions into the com- 
mon principle of a limitation of our faculties, 
intelligence is shown to be feeble, but not 
false; and the contradictory phenomena are 



EEACTIONARY EPOCH. 183 

rescued from contradiction, by showing that 
one must be true. And by this doctrine, the 
moral responsibihty of man is vindicated from 
all cavil. Thus while the liberty of the will 
is inconceivable, so is its contradictory oppo- 
site, the necessity of human actions. As then, 
these two negations are at equipoise, and can 
neither prove nor disprove anything, the testi- 
mony of consciousness, that we are, though 
we know not how, the real and responsible 
authors of our actions, gives the affirmance to 
our accountability. And out of this moral 
germ springs the root of the argument for the 
existence of God, which combined with the 
lately too much disparaged argument from 
design,* constitutes a valid basis for the doc- 
trine of natural Theology. Thus are vindi- 
cated, by this new development of the philo- 
sophy of common sense, the great truths of 

* The evidences of design in nature have, in all ages 
and with all orders of minds, done more to uphold natu- 
ral, or rational theology than all other evidences put 
together. The argument founded in our moral nature, 
so much in vogue with those who aspire to the subtleties 
of Kant, is wholly incompetent without the argument 
from design to corroborate it. 



184 PROaRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

our practical reason, as they have been called ; 
and speculation and practice are reconciled. 
And the doctrine that God is incognizable is 
demonstrated ; and that it is only through the 
analogy of the human with the divine nature, 
that we are percipient of the existence of God. 
Power and knowledge, and virtue cognized in 
ourselves, and tending to consummation, re- 
veal the notion of God. For unless all ana- 
logy be rejected, the mind must helieve in that 
first cause, which by the limited nature of 
our faculties we cannot hnow. In the lan- 
guage of the great Puritan divine, John Owen : 
"All the rational conceptions of the minds of 
men are swallowed up and lost, when they 
would exercise themselves directly on that 
which is absolutely immense, eternal, infinite. 
When we say it is so, we know not what we 
say, but only that it is not otherwise. What 
we deny of God we know in some measure — 
but what we affirm we know not; only we 
declare what we helieve and adore." 

While therefore, this philosophy confines 
our knoioledge to the conditioned, it leaves 
faith free about the unconditioned; indeed 
constrains us to believe in it, by the highest 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 185 

law of our intelligence. This fundamental 
truth of his philosophy Sir William Hamilton 
has enounced in this comprehensive canon: 
" Thought is possible only in the conditioned 
interval between two unconditioned contra- 
dictory extremes or poles, each of which is 
altogether inconceivable, but of which, on the 
principle of Excluded Middle, the one or the 
other is necessarily true." As therefore the 
unconditioned, as we have seen, presents itself 
to the human mind, under a plural form of 
contradictory opposites, as either the absolute 
or the infinite, the problem comes under this 
canon, and the unconditioned is established 
as a verity, incognizable but helievahle. Thus, 
in the very fact of the limitation of our know- 
ledge, is discovered the affirmation, by the 
highest law of our intelligence, of the trans- 
cendent nature of faith. There is no philo- 
sophy, which in its spirit, its scope, and its 
doctrines, both positive and negative, so con- 
ciliates and upholds revealed religion, as that 
which is based on this great canon of Meta- 
physics. The conditions on which revelation 
with its complement of doctrines, is offered to 



186 PROaRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

our belief, are precisely those which this 
canon enounces. 

Having exhibited an outline of what Sir 
William Hamilton has done for Metaphysics, 
we will now proceed to show what he has 
done for Logic. 

In what we have said about the relation, 
which the philosophy of Sir William Hamilton 
bears to that of Bacon, we, by no means, in- 
tend to affirm, that there is much intellectual 
sympathy between the two great thinkers. 
It is quite otherwise. Bacon was preemi- 
nently objective, exhausting his great powers 
chiefly in the field of physics, because, in his 
time, there lay the needs of truth; while 
Hamilton, rather turning his back on physics, 
because of their now extravagant cultivation, 
is supremely subjective, throwing his vast 
energies upon inquiries in the province of in- 
tellectual philosophy. And though Sir William 
Hamilton does not directly disparage the la- 
bours of Bacon, yet he vaunts those of Des 
Cartes at their expense, and certainly nowhere 
does those of Bacon justice. But still the 
philosophies of Bacon and of Hamilton are 
concordant developments of the one philosophy 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 187 

of common sense, and are affiliated in unity 
of fundamental doctrine. Bacon is the fore- 
runner, in that great intellectual movement, 
to which Hamilton has communicated such a 
mighty energy of thought, contributed the 
light of such vast erudition, and adduced such 
stringent historical proofs of its perennial ex- 
istence. It is the inductive branch of Logic 
with its kindred doctrines, which Sir William 
Hamilton has brought out into bold relief, 
from the subordination in which it was held 
by Aristotle : while, at the same time, he has 
so developed, and simplified by a completer 
analysis, the deductive branch, that the Stagi- 
rite only retains his superior fame by being 
the precursor. And it is, by his successful 
labours upon these two great branches of 
Logic, that Sir William Hamilton conciliates 
the philosophies of Aristotle and Bacon; and 
gives to modern thought a force of reasoning, 
through the practical application of nicer dis- 
criminations of the forms of thought, and more 
adequate logical expression, which elevates 
this century to a higher intellectual platform. 
All this shall sufficiently appear in the se- 
quel. 



188 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

When, in the year 1833, Sir WiUiam Ha- 
milton published in the Edinburgh Review, his 
criticism on Whately's Logic, there was pre- 
valent in Britain, total ignorance of the higher 
logical philosophy. The treatise of Whately 
was the highest logical standard; which, 
though in ability it is much above mediocrity, 
in erudition is far below the literature of the 
subject. The article of Sir William elevated 
the views of British logicians above the level 
of Whately, and gave them glimpses of a 
higher doctrine. But the chief service ren- 
dered by this masterly criticism, was the pre- 
cision with which it defined the nature and 
the object matter of logic, and discriminated 
the whole subject doctrinally and historically, 
in the concentrated light of its literature. 

The treatise of Whately presents indistinct, 
ambiguous and even contradictory views of 
the proper object matter of logic. Sometimes 
it makes the process or operation of reason- 
ing, the total matter about which logic is con- 
versant; at other times, it makes logic en- 
tirely conversant about language. Now, 
though it involves a manifest contradiction to 
say, that logic is exclusively conversant about 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 189 

each of two opposite things, yet Whately was 
praised by British logicians for the clearness 
with which he displayed the true nature and 
office of logic. In the low state of logical 
knowledge in Britain, which these facts indi- 
cate, it behooved whoever undertook to point 
out Whately's blunders to enter into the most 
elementary discussion of logic, both name and 
thing. This Sir William Hamilton did in the 
article now under consideration. 

Aristotle designated logic by no single term. 
He employed different terms to designate par- 
ticular parts or applications of logic; as is 
shown by the names of his several treatises. 
In fact, Aristotle did not look at logic from 
any central point of view. And, indeed, his 
treatises are so overladen with extralogical 
matter, as to show that the true theoretical 
view of logic as an independent science had 
not disclosed itself to its great founder. In 
fact, it has only been gradually, that the pro- 
per view of the science has been speculative- 
ly adopted — practically it never has been; 
and no contribution to the literature of the 
subject has done so much to discriminate the 
true domain of logic, as this article of Sir 
16 



190 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

William Hamilton. It marks an era in the 
science. Mounting up to the father of logic 
himself, it showed that nineteen-twentieths of 
his logical treatises, treat of matters that 
transcend logic considered as a formal science. 
It is shown that the whole doctrine of the 
modality of syllogisms does not belong to 
logic ; for if any matter, be it demonstrative 
or probable, be admitted into logic, none can 
be excluded. And thus, with the considera- 
tion of the real trutli or falsehood of proposi- 
tions, the whole body of real science must 
come within the domain of logic, obliterating 
all distinction between formal and real infer- 
ence. 

The doctrine maintained in this article is, 
that logic is conversant about the laws of 
thought considered merely as thought. The 
import of this doctrine we will now attempt 
to unfold. The term thought is used in several 
significations of very different extent. It is 
sometimes used to designate every mental 
modification of which we are conscious, in- 
cluding will, feeling, desire. It is sometimes 
used in the more limited sense of every cogni- 
tive fact, excluding will, feeling, desire. In 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 191 

its most limited meaning, it denotes only the 
acts of the understanding or faculty of com- 
parison or relation, called also the discursive 
or elaborative faculty. It is in this most re- 
stricted sense that the word tliouglit is used in 
relation to logic. Logic supposes the mate- 
rials of thought already in the mind, and only 
considers the manner of their elaboration. 
And the operation of the elaborative faculty 
on these materials is what is meant by thought 
jprojper. And it is the laws of thought, in 
this, its restricted sense, about which logic is 
conversant. 

It must be further discriminated, that logic 
is conversant about thought as a product, and 
not about the producing operation or process; 
this belongs to psychology. Logic, therefore, 
in treating of the laws of thought, treats ol 
them in regard to thought considered as a 
product. What, then, is thought ? In other 
words, what are the acts of the elaborative 
faculty? They are three, conception, judg- 
ment, reasoning. These are all acts of com- 
parison — gradations of thought. Of these, as 
producing acts, psychology treats. Logic 
treats of the products of these, called respect- 



192 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ively, a concept, a judgment, a reasoning. 
The most articulate enunciation, therefore, of 
the intrinsic nature of logic is, the science of 
the formal laws of thought considered as a pro- 
duct, and not as a process. 

But we will show still further what a form 
of thought is. In an act of thinking there 
are three things, which we can discriminate 
in consciousness. First, there is a thinking 
subject; second, an object which we think, 
called the matter of thought ; and third, the 
relation subsisting between the subject and 
object of which we are conscious — a relation 
always manifested in some mode or manner. 
This last is the form of thought. Now logic 
takes account only of this last — the form of 
thought. In so far as the form of thought is 
viewed in relation to the subject, as an act, 
operation, or energj , it belongs to psychology. 
It is only in reference to what is thought 
about, only considered as a product, that the 
form of the act, or operation, or energy, has 
relation to logic. 

With this explanation, we will now enounce 
the laws of thought, of which logic is the 
science. 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 193 

In treating of the conditions of the think- 
able, as systematized by Sir William Hamil- 
ton, we have pointed, out the fact, that it is 
shown, that logic springs out of the condition 
of non-contradiction ; for that this condition 
is brought to bear only under three phases 
constituting three laws : 1st, the law of Iden- 
tity ; 2d, the law of Contradiction; 3d, the 
law of Excluded Middle: of which laws logic 
is the science. Of these laws we will treat in 
their order, and explicate the import or logical 
significance of each. 

The principle of Identity expresses the rela- 
tion of total sameness, in which, a product of 
the thinking faculty, be it concept, judgment, 
or reasoning, stands to all, and the relation of 
partial sameness, in which it stands to each, 
of its constituent characters.* This principle 
is the special application of the absolute equi- 
valence of the whole and its parts taken to- 
gether, applied to the thinking of a thing, by 
the attribution of its constituent or distinctive 
characters. In the predicate, the whole is 
contained explicitly, and in the subject im- 
plicitly. The logical significance of the law 
16* 



194 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

lies in this — that it is the principle of all logi- 
cal affirmation — of all logical definition. 

The second law, that of Contradiction^ is 
this : What is contradictory is unthinkable. 
Its principle may be thus expressed : When a 
concept is determined by the attribution or 
afiirmation of a certain character, mark, note, 
or quality, the concept cannot be thought to be 
the same when such character is denied of it. 
Assertions are mutually contradictory, when 
the one afiirms that a thing possesses, or is 
determined by, the characters which the other 
afiirms it does not possess or is not determined 
by. The logical significance of this law con- 
sists in its being the principle of all logical 
negation, or distinction. 

The laws of Identity and Contradiction are 
co-ordinate and reciprocally relative : and nei- 
ther can be deduced from the other ; for each 
supposes the other. 

The third law, called the principle of Ex- 
cluded Middle, embraces that condition of 
thought which compels us, of two contradic- 
tory notions (which cannot both exist by the 
law of contradiction) to think either the one 
or the other as existing. By the laws of Iden- 



KEACTIONARY EPOCH. 195 

tity and Contradiction, we are warranted to 
conclude from the truth of one contradictory 
to the falsehood of the other; and by the law 
of Excluded Middle, we are warranted to con- 
clude from the falsehood of one, to the truth 
of the other. The logical significance of this 
law consists in this — that it determines that, 
of two forms given in the laws of Identity and 
Contradiction, and by these laws affirmed as 
those exclusively possible, that of these two 
only possible forms, the one or the other must 
be affirmed, as necessary, of every object. 
This law is the principle of disjunctive judg- 
ments, which stand in such mutual relation, 
that the affirmation of the one is the denial 
of the other. 

These three laws stand to each other in re- 
lation like the three sides of a triangle. They 
are not the same, not reducible to unity, yet 
each giving, in its own existence, that of the 
other. They form one principle in different 
aspects. 

These laws are but phases of that condition 
of the thinkable which stipulates for the abso- 
lute absence of non-contradiction. Whatever, 
therefore, violates these laws is impossible not 



196 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

only in thought but in existence; and they 
thus determine, for us, the sphere of possi- 
biUty and impossibility, not merely in thought 
but in reality. They are therefore not wholly 
logical but also metaphysical. To deny the 
universal application of these laws is to sub- 
vert the reality of thought; and as the sub- 
version would be an act of thought, it annihi- 
lates itself They are therefore insuperable. 

There is a fourth law which is a corollary 
of these three primary laws, called the law 
of Reason and Consequent, which is so obtru- 
sive in our reasoning that it needs to be spe- 
cially considered. The logical significance of 
this law lies in this, that in virtue of it, 
thought is constituted into a series of acts in- 
dissolubly connected, each necessarily infer- 
ring the other. The mind is necessitated to 
this or that determinate act of thinking, by 
a knowledge of something different from the 
thinking process itself That which deter- 
mines the mind is called the reason, that to 
which the mind is determined is called the 
consequent, and the relation between the two 
is called the consequence. By reason of our 
intelligent nature, there is a necessary de- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 197 

pendence of one notion upon another, from 
which all logical inference results as an inevi- 
table consequent. This inference is of two 
kinds. It must proceed, from the whole to 
the parts, or from the parts to the whole. 
When the determining notion (the reason) is 
conceived as a whole containing (under it) 
and therefore necessitating the determined 
notion (the consequent) conceived as its con- 
tained part or parts, argumentation proceeds, 
by mental analysis, from the whole to the 
parts into which it is separated. When the 
determining notion is conceived as the parts 
constituting, and therefore necessitating the 
determined notion conceived as the consti- 
tuted whole, argumentation proceeds, by men- 
tal synthesis, from the parts to the whole. 
The process from the whole to the parts is 
called deductive reasoning; the other process, 
from the parts to the whole, is called induc- 
tive reasoning. There is therefore in logic a 
deductive syllogism and an inductive syllo- 
gism. The former is governed by the rule : — 
What helongs {or does not belong) to the contain^ 
ing whole, helongs (or does not belong) to each 
and all of the contained parts. The latter by 



198 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the rule: — What belongs (or does not belong) 
to all the constituent parts^ belongs {or does not 
belong) to the constituted whole. These rules 
exclusively determine all formal inference ; 
whatever transcends or violates them, trans- 
cends or violates logic. 

Sir William Hamilton was the first to dis- 
criminate accurately the difference between 
the deductive and inductive syllogism. All 
that had been said by logicians, except Aris- 
totle, and he is brief, and by no means unam- 
biguous, on logical induction, is entirely erro- 
neous ; for they all, including Whately, con- 
found logical or formal induction, with that 
which is philosophical, and material, and ex- 
tralogical. They consider logical induction 
not as governed by the necessary laws of 
thought, but as determined by the probabili- 
ties of the sciences from which the matter is 
borrowed. All inductive reasoning logical 
and material proceeds from the parts (singu- 
lars) to the whole (universal:) but in the 
formal or subjective, the illation is different 
from that in the material or objective. In 
the former, the illation is founded on the ne- 
cessary laws of thought; in the latter, on the 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 199 

general or particular analogies of nature. 
The logician knows no principle, but the ne- 
cessary laws of thought. His conclusions are 
necessitated, not presumed. 

All this confusion was produced by the in- 
troduction, into formal logic, of various kinds 
of matter. Aristotle himself, corrupted logic 
in this way; and Sir William Hamilton has 
been the first to expel entirely this foreign 
element, and to purify logic from the result- 
ing errors, though Kant had done much 
towards the same result. When we reflect, 
that the only legitimate illation in formal 
logic, is that regulated by the law of reason 
and consequent, which connects thought into a 
reciprocally dependent series, each necessarily 
inferring the other, it is, at once, manifest, 
that the distinction of matter into possible, 
actual, and necessary, is a doctrine wholly 
extralogical. Logical illation never differs 
in degree — never falls below that of absolute 
necessity. The necessary laws of thought 
constraining an inevitable illation, are the 
only principle known to the logician. 

We have just seen that Sir Wilham Hamil- 
ton is the first to signalize the fact, that reason- 



200 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ing from the parts to the whole, is just as ne- 
cessary, and exclusive of material considera- 
tions, as reasoning from the whole to the 
parts. And he has evolved the laws of the 
Inductive Syllogism, and correlated them 
with those of the Deductive Syllogism. 

We now proceed to another important addi- 
tion which he has made to logic. He has 
shown that there are two logical wholes, in- 
stead of one, as the logicians had supposed. 
These two wholes are the whole of Compre- 
hension, called by Sir William, Depth, and 
the whole of Extension, called by him. 
Breadth. These two wholes are in an in- 
verse ratio of each other. The maximum of 
depth and the minimum of breadth are found 
in the concept of an individual (which in re- 
ality is not a concept, but only a single repre- 
sentation;) while the minimum of breadth and 
the maximum of depth is found in a simple 
concept — the concept of being or existence. 
Now, the depth of notions affords one of two 
branches of reasoning, which, though over- 
looked by logicians, is, at least, equally im- 
portant as that afforded by their breadth, 
which alone has been developed by the lo- 



I 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 201 

gicians. The character of the former is that 
the predicate is contained in the subject; of 
the latter, that the subject is contained under 
the predicate. All reasoning, therefore, is 
either from the whole to the parts, or from 
the parts to the whole, in breadth; or from 
the whole to the parts, or from the parts to 
the whole, in depth. The quantity of breadth 
is the creation of the mind, the quantity of 
depth is at once given in the very nature of 
things. The former therefore is factitious, 
the latter is natural. The same proposition 
forms a different premise in these different 
quantities, they being inverse ratios; the 
Sumption in Breadth being the Subsumption 
in Depth. 

Another fundamental development of logic, 
made by Sir William, is that the Categorical 
Syllogism though mentally one (for all medi- 
ate inference is one and that categorical,) is 
either Analytic or Synthetic, from the ne- 
cessity of adopting the one order or the other, 
in compliance with that condition of language 
which requires that a reasoning be distin- 
guished into parts and detailed in order of 
sequence. Because explication is sometimes 
17 



202 PEOGRESS OP PHILOSOPHY. . 

better attained by an analytic and sometimes 
by a synthetic enouncement; as is shown in 
common language. The Aristotelic syllogism 
is exclusively synthetic. Sir William Hamil- 
ton thus relieves the syllogism from a one- 
sided view; and also rescues it from the ob- 
jection of Petitio Princvpii or of an idle tau- 
tology, which has been so often urged against 
it. Such objection does not hold against the 
analytic syllogism, in which the conclusion is 
expressed first, and the premises are then 
stated as its reasons. And this form of 
reasoning being shown to be valid, the objec- 
tion of Petitio Principii is, at once, turned off 
as applicable only to the accident of the ex- 
ternal expression, and not to the essence of the 
internal thought. The analytic syllogism is 
not only the more natural, but is presupposed 
by the synthetic. It is more natural to ex- 
press a reasoning in this direct and simple 
way, than in the round-about synthetic way. 

We will next consider the most important 
doctrine, perhaps, which Sir William Hamil- 
ton has discovered in the domain of logic. 
Logicians had admitted that the subject of a 
proposition has a determinate quantity in 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 203 

thought, and this was, accordingly, expressed 
in language. But logicians had denied, that 
the predicate in propositions has a determinate 
quantity. Sir William Hamilton has, there- 
fore, the honour to have first disclosed the 
principle of the thorough-going quantification 
of the predicate, in its full significance, in 
both affirmative and negative propositions. 
By keeping constantly in view, that logic is 
conversant about the internal thought and 
not the external expression, he has detected 
more, of what it is common to omit in ex- 
pression, of that which is efficient in thought, 
than any other philosopher. Inferences, judg- 
ments, problems, are often occult in the 
thought, which are omitted in the expres- 
sion. The purpose of common language is 
merely to exhibit with clearness the matter of 
thought. This is often accomplished best, by 
omitting the expression of steps in the mental 
process of thinking; as the minds of others 
will intuitively supply the omitted steps, as 
they follow the meaning of the elliptical ex- 
pression. This elliptical character of common 
language has made logicians overlook the 
quantification of the predicate. The purpose 



204 PROGRESS OP PHILOSOPHY. 

of common language does not require the 
quantity to be expressed. Therefore, it was 
supposed, that there is no quantification in 
the internal thought. When we reflect that 
all thought is a comparison of less and more, 
of part and whole, it is marvellous that it 
should not have been sooner discovered that 
all thought must be under some determinate 
quantity. And, as all predication is but the 
expression of the internal thought, predica- 
tion must have a determinate quantity^the 
quantity of the internal thought. But such 
has been the iron rule of Aristotle, that, in 
two thousand years. Sir William Hamilton 
has been the first logician, who, while appre- 
ciating the labours of the Stagirite in this 
paramount branch of philosophy, has been, 
in no degree, enslaved by his authority, and 
has made improvements in, and additions to, 
logic, which almost rival those of the great 
founder of the science himself. 

The office of logic is to exhibit, with exact- 
nesSy the form of thought^ and therefore to sup- 
ply, in expression, the omissions of common 
language, whose purpose is merely to exhibit, 
with clearness, the matter of thought. Logic 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 205 

claims, therefore, as its fundamental postulate, 
That we he alloioed to state, in language, what 
is contained in thought This is exemplified 
in the syllogism, which is a logical statement 
of the form of thought in reasoning, supplying 
in expression, what has heen omitted in com- 
mon language. Apply this rule to propo- 
sitions; and it is at once discovered, that the 
predicate is always of a given quantity in re- 
lation to the subject. 

Upon the principle of the quantification of 
the predicate. Sir William Hamilton has 
founded an entirely new analytic of logical 
forms. The whole system of logic has been 
remodelled and simplified. The quantifica- 
tion of the predicate reveals, that the relation 
between the terms of a proposition is one not 
only of similarity, but of identity; and there 
being consequently an equation of subject and 
predicate, these terms are always necessarily 
convertible. So that simple conversion takes 
the place of the complex and erroneous doc- 
trine, with its load of rules, heretofore taught 
by logicians. 

By the new analytic. Sir William Hamilton 
has also amplified logic. The narrower views 
17* 



206 PROGRESS OP PHILOSOPHY. 

of logicians, in accordance with which an un- 
natural art had been built up, have been 
superseded by a wider view commensurate 
with nature. Logic should exhibit all the 
forms of thought, and not merely an arbitrary 
selection; and especially where they are pro- 
claimed as all. The rules of the logicians 
ignore many forms of afl&rmation and negar 
tion, which the exigencies of thinking require, 
and are constantly used, but have not been 
noted in their abstract generality. Accord- 
ingly, Sir William Hamilton has shown that 
there are eight necessary relations of propo- 
sitional terms; and, consequently, eight pro- 
positional forms performing peculiar functions 
in our reasonings, which are implicitly at 
work in our concrete thinking; and not four 
only, as has been generally taught. Logic 
has been rescued from the tedious minuteness 
of Aristotle, and his one-sided view, and from 
the trammels of technicality, and restored to 
the amplitude and freedom of the laws of 
thought. 

The analysis of Sir William Hamilton en- 
ables us also to discriminate the class, and to 
note the differential quality of each of those 



I 



EEACTIONARY EPOCH. 20T 

syllogisms, whose forms are dependent on the 
internal essence of thought, and not on the 
contingent order of external expression, such 
as the disjunctive, hypothetical, and dillem- 
matic syllogism, and to show the special fun- 
damental law of thought by which each 
distinctive reasoning is more particularly 
regulated. And those forms of syllogism, 
which are dependent on the contingent order 
of the external expression embraced in the 
three figures of Aristotle, are expounded anew; 
and while their legitimacy is vindicated, the 
fourth figure, which has been engrafted on the 
system by some ahen hand, is shown to be a 
mere logical caprice. But we cannot particu- 
larize further. In fact, the workshop of the 
understanding has been laid open, and the 
materials, the moulds, and the castings of 
thought, in all their variety of pattern have 
been exhibited, and the great mystery of 
thinking revealed by this great master, on 
whom the mantle of Aristotle has fallen in 
the nineteenth century. 

Logic may be discriminated into two grand 
divisions — the Doctrine of Elements, and the 
Doctrine of Method. Thought can only be 



208 PEOaEESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

exerted under the general laws of Identity, 
Contradiction, and Excluded Middle, and 
Reason and Consequent; and through the 
general forms of concepts, judgments, and 
reasonings. These, therefore, in their abstract 
generality, are the elements of thought; and 
that part of logic, which treats of them, is the 
Doctrine of Elements. To this part of logic, 
we have thus far confined our remarks. And 
the writings of Sir William Hamilton treat 
only of this part of logic. But, in order to 
show the historical position of Sir Wilham, 
and to exhibit the relation, which, we have 
said his philosophy bears to the philosophy of 
Aristotle and the philosophy of Bacon, as an 
initial, or step of progress towards harmonizing 
the logic of the one with the Method of the 
other, it becomes necessary to remark briefly 
upon the second part of Logic, the Doctrine 
of Method. 

Method is a regular procedure, governed by 
rules which guide us to a definite end, and 
guard us against aberrations. The end of 
Method is logical perfection, which consists in 
the perspicuity, the completeness, and the 
harmony of our knowledge. As we have 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 209 

shown, our knowledge supposes two condi- 
tions, one of which has relation to the think- 
ing subject, and supposes that what is known, 
is known clearly, distinctly, completely, and 
in connection ; the second has relation to what 
is known, and supposes that what is known, 
has a veritable or real existence. The former 
constitutes the logical, or formal perfection of 
knowledge ; the latter, the scientific, or mate- 
rial perfection of knowledge. Logic, as we 
have shown, is conversant about the form of 
thought only; it is, therefore, confined exclu- 
sively to the formal perfection of our know- 
ledge, and has nothing to do with its scientific, 
or material truth, or perfection. Method, 
therefore, consists of such rules as guide to 
logical perfection. These rules are, definition, 
division, and concatenation, or probation. The 
doctrine of these rules is Method. 

Logic, as a system of rules, is only valu- 
able, as a mean, towards logic as a habit of 
the mind — a speculative knowledge of its doc- 
trines, and a practical dexterity with which 
they may be applied. Logic, therefore, both 
in the doctrine of elements and the doctrine 
of method, is discriminated into abstract or 



210 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

pure, and into concrete or applied. We have 
tlius far, only had reference to abstract or 
pure logic; and Sir William Hamilton treats 
only of this. It becomes, however, necessary 
for our purpose, to pass into concrete or ap- 
phed logic. Now, as the end of abstract, or 
pure logical method is merely the logical per- 
fection of our knowledge, having reference 
only to the thinking subject; the end of con- 
crete or applied logical method, is real or 
material truth, having reference only to the 
real existence of what is thought about. Con- 
crete logic is, therefore, conversant about the 
laws of thought, as modified by the empirical 
circumstances, internal and external, in which 
man thinks; and, also, about the laws under 
which the objects of existence are to be known. 
We beg our readers to remember these dis- 
tinctions, and that all that now follows is 
about concrete or applied logic. 

In order to show how the improvements 
and developments in formal logic, which we 
have exhibited, that have been made by Sir 
William Hamilton, conciliate the deductive, 
or exphcative logic of Aristotle, with the in- 
ductive or ampliative logic of Bacon, it be- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 211 

comes necessary to state the difference of the 
philosophical methods of the two philosophers. 
The great difficulty, with the ancient philo- 
sophers of the Socratic School, was to correlate 
logically, the a priori and the a posteriori ele- 
ments of our knowledge. The difficulty seems 
to have been suggested by the question, How 
can we know a thing for the first time? This 
question raised the doubt, that it is vain to 
search after a thing which we know not, since 
not knowing the object of our search, we 
should be ignorant of it when found, for we 
cannot recognize what we do not know. Plato, 
and Socrates perhaps, solved the difficulty by 
the doctrine, that to discover, or to learn, is 
but to remember what has been known by us 
in a prior state of existence. Investigation 
was thus vindicated as a valid process; and 
also a useful one, as it is important to recall 
to memory what has been forgotten. Upon 
this theory of knowledge, Plato made intellect, 
to the exclusion of sense, the faculty of scien- 
tific knowledge, and ideas or universals the 
sole objects of philosophical investigation. 
The Platonic philosophy, called, in this aspect 
of it, Dialectic, had for its object of investiga- 



212 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tion, the true nature of that connection which 
exists between each thing and the archetypal 
form or idea which makes it what it is, and 
to awaken the soul to a full remembrance of 
what had been known prior to being im- 
prisoned in the body. 

Aristotle made a great advance beyond 
Plato, towards correlating the a priori and a 
posteriori elements of our knowledge. He 
rejected the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, as uni- 
versals existing anterior to and separate from 
singulars; and thereby ignored the Platonic 
doctrine of reminiscence. Still, he did not 
extricate himself out of the difficulties which 
environed the problem of human knowledge. 
He seems to have believed in the existence 
of universals or forms, not apart from, but in, 
particulars or singulars. And to correspond 
with this metaphysical doctrine, he made 
both intellect and sense important faculties in 
science. He maintained an a priori know- 
ledge paramount to, but not exclusive of, the 
a posteriori. That while universals are known 
through the intellect, and implicitly contain 
particulars or singulars, yet we may be igno- 
rant of the singulars or particulars, until 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 213 

realized in and through sense; and that, 
therefore, though all knowing is through pre- 
vious knowledge, yet the investigation of par- 
ticulars is not superfluous; because, while we 
may know the universal, we may be ignorant 
of the particular. Therefore, intellect and 
sense combine in framing the fabric of our 
knowledge. 

The Aristotelic method of investigation is, 
therefore, twofold. Deductive and Inductive; 
the first allied with intellect and with uni- 
versals, the latter allied with sense and with 
particulars. Aristotle, in accordance with 
this doctrine of method, seems to have con- 
sidered syllogism proper, or deduction, no less 
amphative than induction — that deductive in- 
ference did, in some way, assure us, or fortify 
our assurance of real truth. We greatly 
doubt whether he discriminated at all, the 
difference between formal and material infer- 
ence; we think that he rather referred all 
difference in the cogency of inference, to the 
difference of necessity or contingency in the 
matter. He, strangely enough, maintains for 
the syllogism proper, the power to deduce 
true conclusions from false premises. There- 
18 



214 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

fore, the syllogistic inference is not wholly 
dependent on the premises. And conse- 
quently. Deduction is not dependent on Induc- 
tion, whose office it is to supply the premises. 
This logical doctrine of Aristotle corresponds 
with his metaphysical, and his psychological 
doctrine. As he makes universals the para- 
mount object of science, and intellect its para- 
mount principle, so does he make syllogism 
the paramount process, and induction the in- 
ferior process in logic ; for though intellect is 
not with him as with Plato, the sole principle 
of science, but conjunct with sense, yet sense 
is logically subordinate to intellect. There 
are, according to his theory of knowledge, 
certain universal principles of knowledge ex- 
isting in the mind, rather as native generali- 
ties than as mere necessities of so thinking, 
which furnish the propositions for syllogism; 
therefore syllogism is not dependent for these 
on induction. It is nevertheless true, that 
according to the Aristotelic theory, there is 
perfect harmony between intellect and sense, 
between syllogism and induction. And though 
syllogism is the more intellectual, the more 
scientific; yet induction can be legitimately 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 215 

used as corroborative and complemental of 
syllogism, and particularly by weak minds, 
who can discern the universal in the particu- 
lars, but cannot apprehend it a priori as a 
native generality. It was because of this 
theory of knowledge, that induction holds so 
subordinate and inferior a place in the Aristo- 
telic logic. 

Whether our account of Aristotle's theory 
of knowledge be the true one or not, for there 
is much obscurity over his doctrine, it is never- 
theless certain, that Aristotle had a very im- 
perfect insight into induction as an objective 
process of investigation. And the slighting 
manner, in which he passes induction over, 
shows how little he appreciated it. He has 
made a crude and superficial distinction, 
which has been perpetuated to this day, be- 
tween the universals derived from induction, 
and universals derived from similars. In 
other words, he has correlated induction and 
analogy as different kinds of reasoning. And 
all writers on logic, including, we suspect, 
even Sir William Hamilton,* still speak of 

* Sir William's Class Lectures will, doubtless, give 
his opinions on this subject. 



216 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

reasoning by induction, and reasoning by ana- 
logy. Thisj it seems to us, is a great confu- 
sion and error. We make induction the pro- 
cess, and analogy or similarity the evidence 
by which the illation is warranted. That 
analogy, which is the mere resemblance of 
relations, has nothing to do with philosophy; 
but only that analogy, which consists of an 
essential resemblance or similarity. The ten- 
dency to generalize our knowledge, by the 
judgment, that where partial resemblance is 
found, total resemblance loill be found, may be 
called, the principle of philosophical presump- 
tion. Upon this principle the objective pro- 
cess of induction is founded, by which we 
conclude from something obser-ved, to some- 
thing not observed; from something within 
the sphere of experience, to something without 
its sphere. This principle of philosophical 
presumption, is brought to bear under two 
objective laws: the first proclaims. One in 
many, therefoi^e one in all; the second pro- 
claims, Many in one, therefore all in one. 
Through the first law, we conclude from a 
certain attribute being possessed by many 
similar things or things of the same class, 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 217 

that the same attribute is possessed by all 
similar things or things of the same class. 
Through the second law, we conclude from 
the partial similarity of two or more things 
in some respects, to their complete or total 
similarity. Both laws conclude to unity in 
totality; by the first, from the recognized 
unity in plurality; by the second, from the 
recognized plurality in unity. Both of the 
laws, it is very apparent, are phases of the 
principle of resemblance or analogy. To call 
the first of these laws induction, and the se- 
cond, ancdogy, as has been done, destroys the 
correspondence between abstract or pure, and 
concrete or applied logic. In abstract or pure 
logic, induction is recognized, but analogy 
not; therefore analogy cannot rest on the 
same basis with induction in concrete or ap- 
plied logic, else, like induction, it would have 
its counterpart in abstract logic. 

The theory of knowledge, which we have 
expounded as his, in which the a priori ele- 
ment is so paramount to the a posteriori, pre- 
vented Aristotle from having any but the 
shallowest insight into the scope of induction. 
The inevitable result of this was to make him 
18* 



218 PKOGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

slight observation through sense; and to rely 
chiefly on deduction from principles supplied 
by the intellect. This was the cardinal vice 
of Plato, and also of Aristotle but not nearly 
to so great an extent. The philosophy, there- 
fore, of Aristotle, is rather the result of an 
analysis of the contents of language, than a 
product of an original observation of nature. 
The philosophy of Bacon is just the reverse — 
it is a product of the observation of nature, 
and not an analysis of the contents of lan- 
guage. One of the chief precautions of the 
Novum Organum is, that language is but the 
registry of the crude notions of imperfect ob- 
servation, and consequently that nature her- 
self must be interpreted, to ascertain the 
truth. The logic of Aristotle was designed 
more for evolving, sifting, and methodizing 
what had already been thought, than for con- 
ducting new investigations. The great pur- 
pose of Bacon was to bring philosophy from 
books and tradition to nature^ from words to 
things, from the Syllogism to Induction. 

The true excellence of the Aristotelic logic, 
therefore, consists in its being considered for- 
mal and not material. In this view, the 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 219 

Organon of Aristotle is conversant about the 
laws under which the subject thinks; while 
the Novum Organum of Bacon is conversant 
about the laws under which the object is to 
be known. Viewed in this aspect, the two 
logics, though contrariant, are not antago- 
nistic ; but are the complements of each other. 
The Aristotelic without the Baconian is null; 
the Baconian without the Aristotelic is defi- 
cient. The Baconian supplies the material of 
the Aristotelic ; and while the truth of science 
is wholly dependent on the Baconian, its logi- 
cal perfection is wholly dependent on the 
Aristotelic. The transition, in thinking, from 
the Baconian to the AristoteHc is as follows. 
The process of Induction, as founded on pro- 
bability, is relative, but its conclusion is abso- 
lute. Similarities or analogies retain their 
character of difference and plurality in the 
inductive process, but become one and identi- 
cal in the conclusion, or class, into which they 
are combined by an act of abstraction and 
generahzation. This conclusion becomes the 
premise of Deduction. It is then within the 
domain of formal logic. 

That Sir William Hamilton has done much 



220 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to reconcile the Aristotelic logic with the Ba- 
conian, by purifying the theory of both, and 
showing their interdependence, by developing 
that side of the Aristotelic which lies next to 
particulars and induction, (for all his addi- 
tions to logic are such,) must be admitted by 
those who can appreciate his writings. And 
nowhere, in the history of philosophy, is there 
a definition of Induction which reaches so 
thoroughly to the heart of the thing, the 
essential nature of the philosophical inference 
of the universal from the singular, as that 
which Sir William has given to discriminate 
the Baconian from the Aristotelic, the mate- 
rial from the formal. His definition is this : 
" A material illation of the universal from the 
singular, warranted either by the general 
analogies of nature, or by special presump- 
tions afforded by the object-matter of any real 
science." This definition shows that the in- 
ductive process of Bacon, is governed by the 
laws, not of the thinking subject, ratione formce^ 
but by the laws of the object to be known, vi 
matericB. This definition, though only used 
to discriminate negatively the Aristotelic, or 
formal induction, sheds so much light on the 



EEACTIONARY EPOCH. 221 

Baconian induction, as to entitle Sir William 
Hamilton to the praise of having contributed 
to a true theoretic exposition of the Baconian 
method, by showing the ultimate basis of its 
validity, in disclosing the nature of the deter- 
mining antecedent and the determined illa- 
tion. The determining antecedent is shown 
to be the analogies of nature, which afford 
presumptions varying in all degrees of proba- 
bility, from the lowest to the highest certainty, 
that what is found in the singulars observed 
is in all the singulars. The physical observer 
asserts, on the analogy of his science, that as 
some horned animals ruminate, all horned 
animals ruminate. The logician accepts the 
conclusion, all horned animals ruminate, and 
brings it under the laws of thought, and con- 
siders the some of the physical observer as 
equivalent to his all. Sir William thus extri- 
cates the theory of material induction from 
the syllogistic fetters in which the logicians 
had entangled it. His design was, however, 
by no means, to exalt the dominion of Bacon ; 
but rather, all his labours are designed to 
draw the age from its one-sided culture — ^its 
too exclusive devotion to physics. We, there- 



222 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

fore^ standing, as we do, at the Baconian point 
of view of philosophy, step forward to hail 
the expositions of Sir William Hamilton, and 
concatenate them with the philosophy of Ba- 
con. So that the Baconian philosophy, in 
the future, may cease to be ^Hhe dirt philo- 
sophy" which some of its heretical disciples 
have made it, and may embrace all the grand 
problems of thought which Sir William Ha- 
milton has brought within the philosophy of 
common sense, and which Bacon certainly in- 
tended his philosophy to comprehend. 

Having now indicated the point of concili- 
ation, between the logics of Aristotle and of 
Bacon through that of Hamilton, we will 
suggest the course of development which the 
conciliated doctrine must take. 

The laws of thought, in their relation to 
the condition of relativity, have not been ex- 
pounded by Hamilton or any other philoso- 
pher. Indeed, this aspect of the laws of 
thought seems to have been entirely over- 
looked. They have been expounded only in 
their relation to the condition of non-contra- 
diction. Now, in the inductive process, the 
condition of relativity is the one chiefly to be 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 223 

regarded; just as in the deductive process, 
that of non-contradiction is the important one. 
Therefore, in giving a theoretical explication 
of induction, we must consider the condition 
of relativity. This condition, as we have 
shown in expounding Hamilton, is brought to 
bear in thinking, under two principal rela- 
tions : the relation of hnoiDledge, the mind 
thinking; and the relation of existence, the 
thing thought about. In the relation of know- 
ledge, the mind thinking, the laws of thought 
are necessarily involved ; because the condi- 
tion of non-contradiction must be fulfilled in 
all thinking. In fact, the conditions of non- 
contradiction and relativity are mutually de- 
pendent and reciprocally relative. But hither- 
to, the relation of existence, the thing thought 
about, has been considered, in explaining the 
inductive process, to the total neglect of the 
relation of the mind thinking. The objective 
element of thought has been considered to 
the exclusion of the subjective element. The 
objective, it is true, is the great determining 
element in induction, and therefore, the more 
obtrusive and important, and very properly 
and naturally first attracted reflective atten- 



224 pRoaRESS of philosophy. 

tion. But then, in giving a theoretical expli- 
cation of induction, it is indispensable that 
the subjective element of thought be regarded. 
In this aspect of the problem of induction, 
the condition of non-contradiction, in its three- 
fold application under the laws of identity, 
contradiction and excluded middle, must be 
expounded. 

In the future, therefore, the chief point of 
development, in applied logic, will consist in 
showing the empirical application of the laws 
of thought in the inductive process. Princi- 
ples, which have hitherto been considered 
primary regulatives, will be resolved into in- 
termediate axioms, mere special applications 
of the law of identity through the principle 
of philosophical presumption. All actual, 
positive thinking is, the identification of the 
plural under the conditions of non-contradic- 
tion and relativity. In the deductive process, 
which is especially dependent on the condition 
of non-contradiction, total identity is the ob- 
jective law; and therefore, the process is only 
explicative. But in the inductive process, 
which is especially dependent on the condition 
of relativity, the one prime law of the objec- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 225 

tive on which the process is dependent, is 
analogy or partial identity; therefore, the 
process is ampliative, because the partial iden- 
tity is shown in the totalizing result to be 
total identity when extricated from the diver- 
sity which modified it into apparently partial 
identity. The field of identity is thereby en- 
larged, and that of diversity lessened — know- 
ledge is increased and ignorance diminished. 
The judgment, therefore, called the 'princij^le 
of pkilosopliical jpresumijtion, that where par- 
tial resemblance (partial identity) is found, 
total resemblance (total identity) will be 
found, is thus shown to be under the imme- 
diate guidance of the law of identity in its 
empirical application. Hence, the principle 
of philosophical presumption determined by 
the objective law of analogy, correlated with 
the laws of thought, constitute the basis of a 
valid theoretical exposition of induction. And 
the details of a practical system will consist 
of the rules of all special judgments deter- 
mined by the special object matters or ana- 
logies. 

The logic of inference has, therefore, for its 
object matter, the laws of thought in their 
19 



226 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

empirical application. In developing this 
logic, truths which have hitherto been consi- 
dered necessary, will be found to be only ex- 
periential axioms applied in actual thinking 
under the guidance of the laws of thought. 
Our original and our acquired perceptions, 
and our necessary and our experiential notions 
are so interdependent in our mental opera- 
tions, that reflective analysis has as yet failed 
to sufficiently separate them in thought. A 
priori principles are only discovered a poste- 
riori. Consciousness is only cognizant of the 
individual act, and has not before it the a 
priori principle or regulative which is found 
by reflective analysis to be the pole on which 
the thinking turned. This is the case of the 
principle of the uniformity of nature. This 
principle, as a known truth, is only an empi- 
rical generalization. The law of identity con- 
ducts thinking to the same affirmatives with- 
out any reference either implicit or explicit to 
any such principle. The uniformity of nature 
is an after reflection. It is not even an as- 
sumption, except in the descending scale or 
process of induction. The principle of philo- 
sophical presumption is therefore not prompted 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 227 

by the assumption of the uniformity of nature, 
but is under the guidance of the law of iden- 
tity, and is but a modification of the mental 
tendency to bring multiplicity to unity. 

As a preparative to this completer logic of 
inference, criticism must ascertain, distin- 
guish, and correlate, the primary beliefs with 
the several cognitive faculties and with the 
laws of thought in their empirical application. 
The primary beliefs are not near so numerous, 
as the spirit of the Scotch philosophy and its 
uncritical state in this respect, seem to show. 

We will now indicate what, we think, 
should be the future course of metaphysics. 

The criticism by Sir WilHam Hamilton, 
which we have exhibited, has established, 
that we can hnoiv nothing beyond the limita- 
tion of consciousness. Any existence, there- 
fore, beyond this limitation, can only be an 
object of faith. Metaphysics which is the 
science of that which transcends knowledge 
must rest upon faith. But then, has not faith 
its limits ? If it has none, then it is as legiti- 
mate to believe one thing as another, which 
is equivalent to having no faith. Therefore 
the principle of contradiction, which is a limit 



228 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to the possible in existence as well as in 
thought, constrains us to set a limit to faith. 
This limit is, the condition of relativity, which 
is the condition of consciousness. We can 
only believe in the absolute or infinite through 
the relative and the finite. We can believe 
in nothing which has not its germ in some 
one or more presentations of consciousness. 
We therefore, entirely repudiate all that wild 
faith which is divorced from the understand- 
ing. No faith is valid whose object, the laws 
of the understanding do not constrain us to 
infer, from data of consciousness, as existent. 
To posit in existence any object which the 
understanding does not place there, by the 
constraint of its laws exercised upon the data 
of consciousness, is pure conjecture. The laws 
of the understanding, as we have shown, are 
regulatives to all inferences as well as to all 
deductions. To let faith go in a direction 
which they do not indicate, is to revolt against 
reason as limited in man. Sir William Hamil- 
ton was right, therefore, in seeking for a 
logical basis for his metaphysics; though, 
perhaps, he diJ not see the full import of the 
doctrine. He found this basis in the logico- 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 229 

metaphysical principle of two contradictory 
extremes conditioning thought. And by ap- 
plying the law of excluded middle, he does 
not, as some have supposed, get a mere formal 
conclusion; because the laws of thought, as 
we have shown, are applicable to inference or 
material conclusion. Nor does he thereby 
surreptitiously introduce, as has been said, 
what he has explicitly rejected; for he does 
not, thereby, make the absolute .or infinite an 
object of knowledge, but only of faith. 

All metaphysical inquiry is, therefore, con- 
fined to the question. What does the logical 
understanding constrain or authorize us to 
beheve in regard to the transcendental? It 
constrains us: 1. To believe that time and 
space are infinite. Because we contradict 
ourselves, in attempting to think that either 
is not infinite. This settled: 2. We are fur- 
ther constrained to think, that infinite sub- 
stantive existence is possible. Because, time 
and space are the infinite conditions of sub- 
stantive existence, being in themselves of such 
a nature as neither to exclude each other, nor 
to constitute being in such a mode as to ex- 
clude other existences. They are in fact, in 



230 PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

their relation to substantive existence, purely 
negative. Here the question emerges, What 
existence does the logical understanding, ex- 
ercised upon the data of consciousness, con- 
strain us to project into the unoccupied con- 
ditions of time and space? It certainly does 
not necessitate us to fill them with infinite 
worlds or with a supersensible world. It does, 
however, constrain us to project an absolute 
cause; for in thinking about causation as 
given in consciousness, we contradict our- 
selves by attempting to think it as absolutely 
beginning. And the judging faculty, from 
which all the interpreting light must come, 
realizes, that its thinking about finite things 
is not logically complete unless an absolute 
cause be posited in existence. An infinite 
series of causes, the other alternative, does 
not satisfy the understanding; because it re- 
cedes in endless negation. Metaphysics there- 
fore culminates in theology. The moral nature 
of man, supplemented by revelation, becomes 
the basis for determining the relation between 
man and God. 

Such is the limited basis of the metaphysics 
which we conceive ought to be developed in 



REACTIONARY EPOCH. 231 

the future. By it^ reason and faith are com- 
pletely reconciled. And the doctrines of reve- 
lation can be grafted on the doctrines of meta- 
physics without discrepancy. The sinking 
and rising of metaphysical systems in the 
past resulted from the divorce of faith from 
the understanding. 

With a view to the progress of rational 
philosophy in the future, consciousness or the 
intellectual globe may be divided into two 
grand provinces, logical consciousness and 
metaphysical consciousness. Logical con- 
sciousness may itself be divided into the 
understanding, the primary beliefs, the in- 
ductive belief or principle of philosophical 
presumption, and the laws of thought. Meta- 
physical consciousness is commensurate with 
the belief, consequent on the limitation of the 
understanding, of transcendental existence; 
or with faith as discriminated from belief. 
The moral faculty, the feelings and the will 
belong not to rational but to moral philosophy, 
and therefore are not delineated. 

We have thus presented such an outline of 
the progress of philosophy, as to indicate the 
true perennial doctrine which consists of the 



232 



PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY. 



results of the consecutive series of discussions 
elicited more or less by the circumstances of 
successive epochs. And we have, by our own 
criticisms and suggestions of new doctrines, 
endeavoured to do something, towards answer- 
ing the demands of the present epoch, so re- 
markable for earnest speculation. 



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